subject: Magento Pre Launch Checklist [print this page] Magento is a great ecommerce platform and easy to manage too. If you are slightly aware of the code development and can read/comprehend some PHP codes, then installing and configuring Magento can be a sweet tooth. Expert Magento developers dont need supervision or regulations but a little checklist for the newbies can be of great help. I have listed some points that can serve as a checklist for the Magento developers and can help them to move their store from development to production. Please note that not all of the points mentioned below are mandatory. Some can be skipped depending upon their custom requirements.
Updating base URLs so that they do not keep pointing back to the staging server. I remember a tragic incident when the developer forgot to change the link of a Checkout button, and that cost his client six months of advertisement. PATH - System Configuration Web
Update the title & Metadata for search engines. Do not use default values. PATH - SEO System Configuration General Design HTML Head
Make a placeholder image specifically for your site, do not use a NO IMAGE image. Make the website unique and refreshing. PATH - System Configuration Catalog Catalog Product Image Placeholders
For security reasons, change the default path of administrative panel. Normally it is something like www.mystore.com/admin. Make it something difficult to hack like www.mystore.com/admin83264. PATH - System Configuration Advanced Admin Admin Base URL
Optimize the Javascripts. Search engine spiders/programs/algorithms or crawlers do not like junk. Special notations and characters, loops and confusing texts are a total NO-NO for them. They might read and try to encrypt the JS codes but they might not as well. So optimize the store by flushing all S codes into one file. PATH - System Configuration Developer JavaScript Settings
So you have got rid of JS codes, but still see a lot of CODE instead of content that may contain keywords for the search engines and information for the general user. Well, try to get rid of CSS codes. And compress it too. PATH - System Configuration Developer CSS Settings
Clean your log files daily to make space for more important details. PATH - System Configuration Advanced System Log cleaning
The above are just a few of a huge checklist, which rather world be more accurate and hence jotting those down would cost me a huge amount of time, so Id share it in phases. I hope my readers will appreciate the efforts and Id look forward to their comments. Their ideas would help me to draft my next articles as per their expectations.
