As a developer, launching a website can be a difficult task as you have to take care of various things in mind. There are a lot of people, who think that they might have everything under control, but in your mind, you are well aware that there will be some things that you can miss out. Your planned project will fall in melancholy when that happens with you.

To make matters a lot simpler for you, I have listed a complete list of pre-launch things that every single Magento develop should do while launching their Magento website. It will be a great choice for us if we keep this comprehensive list on every Magento developers’ desk.

By following this list, you can easily launch your Magento website successfully and get enormous benefits. Without taking your more time, we can have a look at 20 pre-launch things to do while launching Magento website:

Preparing HTML Head –

The most important thing that you need to perform for Magento SEO is to alter the settings of your Magento HTML head. One can easily change the title, meta description and review the keywords for the SEO when you navigate to System>Configuration>General>Design>HTML Head.

Base URLs –

Base URLs are those URLs that are stored in the database table core_config_data, but all those URLs can be easily entranced through the admin interface if you have access to it: System→ Configuration → Web. While moving the website, URLs need to be updated else all the URLs will be referring back to the staging site.

Favicon –

Sometimes, Magento can be a tricky chore, but it doesn’t mean that you can get left with making a fool out of yourself by forgetting to develop a favicon.

Inserting the Right Store Information –

You can easily find and alter your store’s information in System>Configuration>General>Store Information. By going to System>Configuration>Store Email Addresses, you are able to change the email address of your store.

Inserting Product Placeholder Images –

For products and catalogues, Magento comes with default placeholder pictures. The placeholder images will be shown by default when there is no image given to your product. You are permitted to upload your own Product Placeholder images by going to System>Configuration>Catalog>Product Image Placeholders.

Inserting the Right Store Information –

Now, it becomes easily possible for you to search and change your store information in System>Configuration>General>Store Information. You are also capable of changing the email address of your store by going to System>Configuration>Store Email Addresses.

Altering the Admin URL –

It is also good for you to change the URL of your admin page for security reasons. Through admin panel, you can also change your Admin URL. Just go through this Go to System>Configuration>Advanced>Admin Admin Base URL. You are also capable of choosing the utmost protection for your store and select a strong username and password for the admin.

Setting Up The Tax Rules –

Various possibilities and choices are designed by Magento in order to deal with the difficult processes of taxation. However, classes of product taxes chosen to a particular product by the proprietor. People can also set the tax percentage as resolute by the particular region, country, state of your customer.

Make sure you recheck it to charge whether you have missed something in the development period before you go live. Furthermore, you can easily find the tax settings in System>Configuration>Sales>Tax.

Completing the Layout of 404 Error Page –

You do not have to misjudge the capabilities of a 404 error page as you can make use of it to put some categories by editing the layout of the page. By navigating to CMS>Pages>404 Page, you can easily do it.

Transactional Emails –

When it comes to talking about transactional emails, they are popular for using a sole logo to the default one. Ensure that the image which you wanted to use is saved in your theme directory as logo_email.gif.

Maximum number of emails will be sorted easily because of using the configuration, which you have already set. Although, a lot of templates, which as of version 1.4.1.1, are making use of hard coded values, so it is important to go in to these and make some of the changes. Below, you can find email templates that are affected:

Plain-text Passwords in Emails are Considered as Evil

Whenever any website send out plain-text passwords in emails, it really cramps me out. Magento is doing this whenever you sign-up for an account. Consequently, it is recommended to go into the transaction email for account confirmation and restore the password with some holding text like “****”.

Change Admin Url –

It is better to alter the URL, which the admin interface resides on for security purpose. It can be easily changed in the app/etx/local.xml file. For the admin router, you can see admin defined as the frontname. Before you visit your new admin URL, delete cache.

Keeping CSS in a Single File –

It is quite similar to the JavaScript task. However, it is an experimental one, so it is must to take safeguard before finishing this task. Before you put the website live to see, one option is to power on the staging server if this task has any of side-effects. It can be easily done by just going to System>Configuration>Developer>CSS Setting.

Bring JavaScript Into One File –

You should limit the amount of HTTP requests, which are developed every time as this way you can reduce the loading time of the webpages. One can easily do this by just flushing JavaScript file into a single file: System>Configuration>Developer>Settings.

Tax Settings –

All these must be set up already; however, it doesn’t hurt to see if anything in the configuration was unnoticed. These can be found in System→ Configuration → Sales → Tax and also Sales → Tax.

Invoice and Packing Slip Design –

It is important for you to upload the logo that can be used for invoices. Rather, you can place logo_email.gif in your images folder in the skin directory. However, some of the other settings are there as well that you should pay attention to.

Product Inventory –

Possibly, you did not bother with managing stock when importing products the first time around. At the time of developing, it is an unnecessary hassle. You can also check with your client what configuration he would like set up before you go live. With stock levels before going live, you may require to do another product import.

Allowing Caching –

At the time of developing, caching is disabled at the commencement. Once you done with it, it is essential that you remember to re-enable the caching again and revive it while you are prepared for show time.

Setting Google Sitemap –

There are numerous extended settings, which are obtainable if you want to use Google Webmaster Tool only for producing the sitemap, which regulates itself. These are found in System > Configuration > Catalog > Google Sitemaps.

Checking for Payment Gateway –

It is essential for you to ensure that your payment gateway must be ready to move your website from testing to live. If you do not set this accurately, it will result in monetary losses.

Clearing Log –

The logs that obtainable in the database spread out with time. In order to remove logs from admin in a specific manner, you can go to System>Configuration>Advanced>System>Log cleaning. You need to enable it and you also need to remove all those logs frequently.

So, these are the 20 pre-launch things that you should do while launching your Magento website. By keeping these things in mind, you can start on a perfect website to expand your business worldwide.

In case, if you are finding difficulty in fixing all these things in your Magento website, you can hire a professional Magento developer, who has adept in designing and developing Magento based website. Get in touch with us by filing an instant quote form and we will get back to you within 24 hours!