Drupal

Drupal Site Building Checklist

Before you launch a Drupal site, how do you make sure that you haven't missed anything and that your site is ready to launch? If someone else is going to be maintaining the site, how do you make sure the site can be easily maintained? While Drupal provides lots of functionality out-of-the box, even the simplest website requires configuration, installing contributed modules, and the checking of checkboxes.

Why have a checklist?

Plans change between design & launch Site building is an iterative process, so things change and get inconsistent. Avoid last minute fixes the week after launch, or when the site admin starts adding content Your checklist can serve as documentation.

What's on the checklist?

 Content types & Views
 SEO
 Admin tools
 User Accounts
 Content
 Pre-Launch checklist

Content Types

 Delete unused content types	
 Manage display: consistent the ordering/format of fields for content display	
 Manage fields: consistent ordering/labels for content creation	
 Content type settings are consistent and make sense for each type of content	
 All content types have been tested (drupal.org/project/devel and with real content)

Views

 Delete Views that aren’t being used
 Document your Views
 Consistent formatting across View
 Check permissions on administrative Views

Seo Tools

 Google Analytics (drupal.org/project/google_analytics)
 Configure URL Alias Patterns (Configuration > Search and metadata > URL Aliases > Settings > Patterns)
 Fix navigation on 404 pages (drupal.org/project/navigation404)
 Set custom error pages (Configuration > System > Site Information)
 Set page titles for key pages (drupal.org/project/page_title)
 Configure the Mollom module to prevent spam (drupal.org/project/mollom)
 Add social media tools (drupal.org/project/sharethis)

Content Editing

 Enable and configure an editor (drupal.org/project/wysiwyg or drupal.org/project/bueditor)
 Text formats are ordered and configured correctly (Configuration > Content authoring > Text formats)
 Images can be embedded in the body text (drupal.org/project/insert and drupal.org/project/image_resize_filter)

For the Administrator

 Administration Views are in place (drupal.org/project/admin_views)
 Views items can be re­ordered as necessary (drupal.org/project/draggable_views)
 Administrators have a menu that they can access (drupal.org/project/admin_menu)

Emails

 Webforms are configured to send to the correct email address	 (Content > Webforms)
 Email notifications for registration have been tested	 (Configuration > People)

User Accounts

 Roles have been created and tested (drupal.org/project/masquerade)
 Registration is limited if necessary (Configuration > People > Account Settings)
 Anonymous users have permissions to access/search content (People > Permissions)

Content

 Remove all test content from the site (drupal.org/project/views_bulk_operations)
 No required fields are missing from legacy content	
 Image styles have been tested with different sizes (drupal.org/project/imagecache_proportions)

Theming

 Load images based on device size (drupal.org/project/adaptive_image drupal.org/project/resp_img)
 Check that the viewport meta tag is in place (drupal.org/project/viewport or http://drupal.org/node/1 888028)
 Make sure there’s a favicon (Appearance > Settings)

Multilingual Items

 Date formats are localized (Configuration > Regional and language > Date and time > Localize)
 Emails are translated (Configuration > People) 
 Transliteration of path aliases(drupal.org/project/transliteration)
 Run translation updates (drupal.org/project/i18n)

Pre-Launch

 Check that aliases have been updated (Configuration > Search and metadata > URL Aliases > Settings > Update)
 Set update action for URL aliases  (Configuration > Search and metadata > URL Aliases > Settings)
 Disable, uninstall, and remove contrib modules that you don’t use	
 Disable core modules that you don’t use (i.e. overlay, toolbar, color, comments, search, dashboard)	
 Disable modules for development (i.e. masquerade, devel)
 Make sure that your modules are up­-to­-date (Configuration > Modules > Update)
 Change the administrative password (Go to /user/1 /edit )
 Disable error logging (Configuration > Development > Logging and errors)
 Enable caching and aggregation (Configuration > Development > Performance)
 Do a security review	(drupal.org/project/security_review)

Post-Launch

 Paths are working correctly (the .htaccess file is correct)
 Emails are being sent	
 Multilingual domains are set up	
 Files can be uploaded (permissions and file upload limit are correct)
 Backup your site. Back up both the database and the files on the web server. Test your backups! If you don't test them, you have no idea if your backup will actually work when you need it.