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The Playbook / Before publish

6. Before publish

The gate between a finished build and a live site. Run it once, properly.

The first launch gate. Run it ONCE, on the whole site, before it goes live. A smaller site of genuinely good pages beats a big site of filler: if you cannot review every page well by launch day, launch fewer pages.

The soft open (optional, recommended)

You do not have to wait for the finished site to exist online. The best move: as soon as the domain is bought, put up a simple coming-soon page and let it work while you build.

  • The homepage gets indexed early, so launch day starts with an aged domain instead of a cold one.
  • Collect emails ("be the first to know when we open") and/or link your social accounts, whichever you will actually use.
  • HARD RULE (learned the expensive way, 2026-09-05): the capture form is NOT live until one real submission has been verified stored, end to end, the same day it deploys. A form that renders but cannot save is worse than no form: it burns real visitors silently. If saving depends on a manual step (connecting a store, an API key, a dashboard click), that step blocks the deploy or gets escalated until done, never parked on a to-do list. CopyDesign lost its entire pre-launch waitlist to this.
  • Keep every unfinished page invisible to visitors AND crawlers: robots allows only the exact homepage, no sitemap advertised, and anonymous requests to internal pages redirect home. A team access code lets you and testers preview the real site.
  • When you open (website or physical location), message everyone who signed up. That list is your launch day.

Content

  • Every planned page is filled: no placeholder text, no empty sections, no "coming soon" leftovers.
  • No thin content, HARD GATE: every indexable page carries at least 300 words of real page text. You get exactly one first impression on search engines; a site that opens thin gets classified thin. Do not publish, and do not connect Search Console, while a single page is under the floor. Enforce with a script that counts rendered words per page (deterministic), never by eye.
  • Pre-share audit, HARD GATE: run an Ahrefs site audit on the finished site and fix EVERY error it reports before sharing the site anywhere. Warnings get triaged; errors get fixed, no exceptions.
  • Every page reviewed by the editor agent (0 violations), then by the owner, page by page, rendered.
  • Metas are real: every meta title and description describes ITS page and gives a reason to click. Templated filler metas bury new sites.
  • No duplicate content: no two pages share intros, headings, or big boilerplate blocks; no two pages target the same keyword.
  • All legal pages done AND reviewed one by one: privacy policy always; terms, cookie policy, disclosures per your project type and jurisdiction.
  • Contact form tested end to end: the email actually arrives.
  • Navigation links to real page URLs in BOTH desktop and mobile menus, not to homepage-only anchors. Every key page reachable from nav and footer.

Internal links

  • Full internal-link pass, page by page: inbound and outbound links for each page, descriptive anchors, no orphan pages, no 404 targets.

Technical

  • Full crawl of the preview: every URL returns 200, no broken links.
  • HTML validates (W3C validator); accessibility pass (WAVE).
  • Sitemap loads, lists every live URL, nothing stale or foreign.
  • Favicon set live at the root and rendering; OG image wired on every page and rendering in a share preview.
  • Schema validates on every page, no errors, no fabricated data.
  • Mobile pass on a real device: no horizontal scroll, tap targets 44px+, readable text.
  • Performance pass: optimized images, lazy loading below the fold, a speed score you are not ashamed of.
  • Install tracking (Google Analytics, Clicky, or your pick) and verify it fires before launch day, not after.
  • Security headers set; custom 404 page with full site chrome.

Done when

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