Checklist for web projects

Questions to ask yourself when starting a web project

When building a website there is a lot to consider, from design to development and deployment there are often multiple parties coordinating to produce an outcome. Often these parties are hidden from the customer with agencies tending to prefer control over transparency which can lead to a lack of ownership when it comes to overall coordination. Project management is key in understanding all the moving parts in a website development project.

We have written the list below as a series of prompts for everyone from the client to the developer to serve as a discussion point to ensure clarity or roles and responsibilities.

We hope it’s helpful for you and your website development project.

Development

  • Is there content that needs to be migrated
  • Who will enter the old and new content
  • Who will be responsible for ensuring that the content is optimised for speed
  • What is the clients understanding of editability
  • Do they have previous experience with WordPress that they expect to be a feature of the new website
  • Have these requirements been communicated in the scope of work to Tigmo
  • Who will be responsible for testing the final website pre and post launch

Hosting

  • Is there a staging server
  • Is there a production server
  • Who will manage the transition from staging to production
  • Who will be setting up the SSL and any other required hosting services
  • Who will be setting up and managing the mail server
  • What is an acceptable amount of down time when going live
  • Who is supporting the hosting going forward
  • Will anyone be performing stress testing of the server
  • Who will be responsible in the event that the website goes down
  • Who will be responsible if the website needs to be restored to a previous version
  • Who is maintaining backups of the website, what is their frequency
  • Who will be responsible if the server needs to scale
  • If the server is changing who is responsible for other services connected to the server
  • If the DNS is moving who is responsible for managing the transition and migrating the records

Speed

  • Who will be responsible for optimising the server to perform with the new website
  • Who is responsible for the speed of the production website
  • Will a content delivery network be leveraged (CDN)

Security

  • Who will be responsible for WordPress security
  • Who will be responsible for server security
  • Who will be responsible for hardening the server and website
  • Is there any sensitive data that needs to be considered e.g. form submissions

Maintenance

  • Who will be responsible for WordPress maintenance
  • Who will be responsible for server maintenance
  • Who will be responsible for monitoring the website

SEO

  • Has an SEO transition plan been put in place
  • Has a SEO strategy been put in place
  • Who will be updating the SEO data for the production website
  • Who will be managing the SEO settings
  • Who will be submitting the site for indexation

Analytics

  • Is there a preferred analytics provider
  • Is there a current analytics account that needs to be merged with
  • Does an analytics account need to be setup
  • Do goals need to be setup
  • Who will manage the setup

Additional software/platforms

  • Does search console need to be setup
  • Do any ad platforms need to be integrated
  • Do any mail platforms need to be setup
  • Is there any additional software that needs to be managed/integrated
  • Who is responsible for managing the software side
  • Who is responsible for managing the website side