A static site has fewer moving parts than an app, but the launch still has a checklist. Skip an item and you find out from a customer, not a dashboard.
Work top to bottom. Nothing here needs a paid tool.
Guides · Launch
Static Site Launch Checklist
Everything to verify before pointing a domain at a new static site — build, SEO, hosting, and the day-of cutover.
6 min · updated 29 Aug 2026Build & content
- The production build succeeds from a clean checkout (delete node_modules and try again).
- No console errors or failed network requests on any page.
- Every internal link resolves — run a link checker against the built output.
- Images have width/height or aspect-ratio set, and alt text where meaningful.
- 404 page exists and is styled, not the host's default.
- Favicon, apple-touch-icon, and a web manifest are present.
SEO & sharing
- Each page has a unique <title> and meta description.
- Canonical URL is set on every page and points at the production origin.
- Open Graph and Twitter card tags render a correct preview (test with a real scraper).
- sitemap.xml lists every public URL and is referenced in robots.txt.
- robots.txt does not accidentally disallow the whole site (a common staging leftover).
- Structured data (Organization, and Service/FAQ where relevant) validates.
Hosting & security
- Assets with hashed filenames send a long immutable Cache-Control; HTML sends a short TTL.
- HTTPS works on apex and www, and HTTP redirects to HTTPS.
- One canonical host — apex or www — and the other 301-redirects to it.
- Security headers present: HSTS, X-Content-Type-Options, Referrer-Policy, a starter CSP.
- The deploy pipeline purges the CDN HTML cache automatically.
- A previous build can be redeployed as a rollback in one step.
Cutover day
- Lower the DNS TTL on the current records 24–48 hours beforehand.
- Deploy the new site to its host and test it on the host's URL first.
- Add the custom domain to the new host and let its certificate issue.
- Switch the DNS record, then watch traffic and error rates for an hour.
- Confirm old URLs redirect and search-critical pages still resolve.
- Raise the DNS TTL back up once you are confident.
Rather not do this yourself?
Hosting, launch, performance, and cloud hardening are all services here. Hand it over.