So we’ve covered pretty much all of the bases when it comes to how to make a website:
- Step 1: Plan & Outline
- Step 2: Register Your Domain
- Step 3: Establish Web Hosting
- Step 4: Draft The Design
- Step 5: Code The Site
- Step 6: Search Engine Optimization
- Step 7: Test & Launch The Site (What you’re reading right now)
Testing The Website
Now that the site has been carefully planned, designed, and developed, it’s time to take it to the world. But there is one final step that must come first before officially launching the site…that’s right—it’s time to test!
Assuming that all development was done correctly, website testing should be a piece of cake. After all, most testing will have been done at each individual level of the programming process. But it’s still necessary to do some final pre-launch testing. Here are some of the things to look for:
Cross-browser compatibility – A website performs differently depending on the browser it’s being viewed in. For example, a website viewed in IE6 will often appear drastically different than a website viewed in the latest version of a modern web browser like Safari or Firefox. New technology in browsers can have a significant influence on how a website functions. A competent web pro will always design with the latest standard in mind, and usually some degree of backwards compatibility too (supporting ancient browsers like IE6 is another story altogether).
Standards compliance – Does all of the website’s programming check out and validate as fully compliant? It’s always a good idea to do a final check for valid, compliant code…even if that step has already been done repeatedly through the process, the final version of the site that’s ready for launch could have one little backslash in the wrong place in thousands of lines of code that causes the entire site to be “invalid” from a standards perceptive. Thanks to the help of validity checking tools, it’s incredibly simple to run a final check and quickly touch up any small glitches before giving the “all systems go.”
Launching The Website
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Usually the launch process is simple. For brand new websites, the final site will need to be uploaded to the web hosting and the domain set to point at that hosting. For websites that are being updated to a new version, doing the switch might require a brief downtime to swap out all of the old files on the hosting with the new—a professional can get this done remarkably fast though.
Other than that, it’s really all about marketing the new site and announcing the big launch. And of course, giving yourself (and your designers) a well deserved pat on the back for getting through the project successfully.
Wrapping It All Up…
At first glance, it would seem that making a website is a breeze—just design a quick site and put it online, right? Well, as we’ve revealed throughout this blog series on how to make a website, the facts would suggest otherwise. Professional web design and development is a fairly complex process. There are many, many pieces that need to fit together just perfectly in order to create a truly professional experience for your website visitors.
