Kestello

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Going live ​

The site is ready and you want the world to see it. Launch day is mostly ticking things off, and this page is the list. Work through it in order. Most of it takes a few minutes, and nothing here can break the site.

Moving from WordPress? Do the check after the import first; switching over is covered there too, and this list picks up the rest.

A week before ​

  1. Open System → Site Health and fix everything marked critical. It checks the server, the background tasks, the email settings and more, and says what to do about each problem. See Site Health.
  2. Check that background tasks run. System → Scheduled tasks shows when each task last ran. If nothing has run, set up the cron job from Installing Kestello. Without it, there are no nightly backups and scheduled posts don't go out.
  3. Send yourself a test email. On the Email tab of Site → Settings, use Send a test email. Check that it arrives and is not in your spam folder. Password resets and form submissions travel the same way.
  4. Fill in a form yourself, as a visitor would, and check that the submission reaches the right inbox. See Forms.
  5. Read every page once more on a phone. Most visitors will see it there first.

On the day ​

  1. Make a backup with a note, such as "before launch", under Site → Backups, and download it. See Make a backup now.
  2. Point the domain at the site in your domain's DNS settings or your host's control panel. Your host can tell you the exact value. It can take from a few minutes to a day to reach everyone.
  3. Turn on HTTPS for the domain in your host's control panel.
  4. Set the real address. On the General tab of Site → Settings, make sure Site address is the real domain and starts with https://. Links in emails are built from it.
  5. Let search engines in. On the Reading tab of Site → Settings, turn off Hide the site from search engines if you turned it on while building.
  6. Open the site on the real address, on a computer and on a phone, and click through the menu.

The week after ​

  1. Look at the Not found list under Site → Redirects. It lists addresses people tried that found nothing, often old links from another site or a printed flyer. Give the common ones a redirect. See Redirects.
  2. Check that the nightly backup ran. Site → Backups should show a new Scheduled backup each morning.
  3. Keep a copy off the server. A backup that only lives on the same server goes down with it. Download one now and then, or store backups somewhere else automatically.
  4. Write down who has the keys: who can sign in as administrator, where the hosting and domain accounts are, and where the backups go. If the person who built the site moves on, this list is what you'll need.

Next up ​

Your first hour covers the settings and accounts to set up on a new site, if you skipped any of them on the way here.

Kestello documentation.