Web App Pre-Launch Checklist

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This is my checklist for deploying PHP / Kohana based web application projects.

Pre-develop

  1. Will the layout be responsive or fixed?
  2. How to address the user (informal / formal)
  3. URL scheme - readable, semantic, short

Frontend

Markup

  1. Does it have a favicon?
  2. Does it have a <title> tag that changes for every page?
  3. Does it have <meta> author, description, charset?
  4. Did you test the layout with IE 7, 8, 9, Opera, Firefox, Chrome?
  5. Did you test it with common screen resolutions?
  6. Does the main logo link to the front page?
  7. Does the HTML validate?
  8. Does it have (Google) Analytics?
  9. Did you optimize and concatenation script, style and image (thumbs!) resource?
  10. Does it have a print stylesheet?

User Experience

  1. Did you go over all the texts, tooltips, instructions one more time? Can they be made more specific and shorter?
  2. Does it have an informative 404 page?
  3. Do you have informative help texts?
  4. Are you validating forms with JS?

Backend

  1. Are system-level folders, resources protected (.htaccess)?
  2. Does it have a separate database username?
  3. Are events logged?
  4. Can it do self-diagnosis and notification on critical errors?
  5. Did you protect against unauthorized usage (permission checks on certain actions)?

Database

  1. Is the database indexed?
  2. Is the database documented (ERD, comments)?

Resources