Sitecore Go Live checklist

Here are some of the things we can check as part of our go live prep activity:

1. Disable default Sitecore credentials (admin/b)– make sure either admin/b has been disabled or updated with strong password.
2. Protect admin pages under /sitecore/admin/ folder for e.g if you have created any custom utility or aspx page to execute any task it should be restricted.
3. Sitecore Client license is added and not the development license- double check if Sitecore client license has been deployed in the production environment and not development license.
4. Custom Errors are working fine- make sure custom error pages are working as expected like 404, 500 etc and no yellow screen page is displayed if any error occur.
5.  Check 301 redirects are working before go live.
6. Email check– Search throughout the application for places where emails are sent, make sure all test email address has been removed and client webmaster email address is added.
   1. Test again if mails are going.
7. Production code version– Check if production has latest version from source control.
8. Connection string details– make sure connection string has production specific settings like DB servers and port details.
9. Publish test– Test Publishing to all targets and see if it’s working well.
10. Rebuild all indexes.
11. Check if site search is working and right index is being use for CM and CD servers.
12. Sitecore scheduler check– If any scheduled tasks exists, verify if the time set is correct and the scheduler is hitting.
13. Minified version of CSS and JS has been used. (depends how CSS/JS has been managed)
14. Cache bursting is in place to solve the issue of browser caching- this is not mandatory but good to have.
15. Quickly checking site pages and check there are no server errors.
16. Check there are no errors in the logs.
17. No hardcoded and test values- if any static values are required get it from Sitecore dictionary instead.
18. Experience editor is working fine and check if we are able to add/modify the components from Experience Editor.
19. Tune the cache size (data/prefetch/item and html caches)- this is done after running the load test and reviewing how caches are performing.
20. Check there are no console errors.
21. Check if static assets is being served from CDN (if CDN is used)
22. User roles has been created for managing different section of the site.( should be done based on roles and not users)
23. Rebuild link databases.
24. Favicon is added, if it’s a multi-site application- check correct Favicon has been used for individual sites.
25. Verify analytics scripts.
26. Check for robots.txt file and make sure it has right values.

This is NOT the final and complete list-but just an attempt to show some of the common things to verify before we go live and helps us in the prod prep activity.

Hope it helps!!

Happy learning