The launch of your site is not as simple as a “flip of a switch”. There are many steps to safely launch the new site which can take several hours to complete. Because the internet is vast, these updates can take a few hours to propagate around the entire internet fully. It’s possible that your neighbor might see the new site, while you still see the old site. Who sees the new site first depends on many variables, including your internet service provider, location, firewalls, and local computer setup.
So now you might wonder what your users will see during this propagation time. There is no outage during this time. Users on the internet continue to see the old site until the time at which the new one has propagated to their area. Once propagated, their next click or a reload displays the new site.
If you need to announce a date for your site launch, we recommend announcing it the day after your scheduled launch date. This allows ample time for the new site to fully propagate around the internet and accommodate any errors or patches that might occur during the launch process. It also gives Etna time to complete our launch steps to ensure the new site is functioning correctly.
If you’re interested in the details of the steps Etna takes to launch a site, below is the list of tasks on the day of launch:
- Archive old DNS
- Deploy staging or redesign site files, database and uploads to production.
- Update DNS records
- Issue SSL certificate and force HTTPS.
- Confirm traffic is flowing to the correct analytics account.
- Test all forms to confirm auto response and lead message pass spam checks.
- Generate sitemap.xml and submit to Google and Bing.
- Configure Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools.
- Configure gallery on production. Test front and back end.
- Perform link review to check for 404s
- Test monitoring system.
- Clean up and archive old site files
- Update Etna internal systems to reflect launch
Our goal is to provide you with a smooth and successful launch of your new site. Please reach out to your Project Manager if you have questions about your launch process.
We are delighted to launch your new site and hope that you are too!
