Drupal Website Launch Checklist

Pre-launch

• Perform load testing & optimization beforehand include slow-log analyses;
  • Percona Toolkit for MySQL can help to analyze slow logs;
• Check Drupal SEO Tools report;
• Match recommendations of the following:
  • Security Review Module;
  • Site Audit module;
  • Acquia Insight;
  • YSlow;
• Performance and Scalability Checklist module;
• Match the requirements of Acquia Insight;
• Analyze Coder Review results;
• Perform load testing using tools with cleared database cache, memcache and image styles when caches are disabled;
• Make sure you have a failover scenario and a quick backup;
• Configure Cron jobs;
• Disable all development modules;
• Add console.log stub;
• Configure caches properly: Varnish, Memcache;
• Check if CDNs are configured correctly for live environment;
• Make sure AJAX requests are cached;
• Enable bandwidth optimization;
  • Compress cached pages;
  • Aggregate and compress JS/CSS files;
    • Use Advanced CSS/JS Aggregation module instead of core aggregation;
• Test simultaneous an consequent anonymous access scenarios and behavior when every cache is enabled;
• Replace database logging functionality with other solutions, e.g. syslog;
• Disable any errors output on frontend;
• Enable fast_404 in settings.php file or use Fast 404 module;
• Make sure file permissions for file directories and code directory are set correctly;
• Make sure that input formats are correctly configured;
• On /admin/config/system/site-information make sure the email address and name are correct;
• Ensure website permissions are set appropriately and minimally;
• Get rid of CHANGELOG.txt etc (from Git etc). Do NOT remove robots.txt;
• If using SSL, change your local /etc/hosts to point the site to its live domain and ensure SSL redirection is working correctly;
• Remove test content, such as "lorum ipsum" text, dummy users, or content generated by the Devel module;
• Check the maximum file upload sizes and maximum execution time;
• If you don't use core Search module, make sure it's disabled;
• If you use any replacements for standard Cron, make sure it's disabled;
• Warm caches before launch:
  • Use Cache Warmer module;
  • Use HTTPRL Spider module;
• If possible, perform launch component-by-component and one-by-one;
• Make sure your admin account has a strong password and it's changed before launch;
• Enable caching for Views output, Panels panes output and blocks. Useful modules are the following:
  • Views Content Cache.

Gotchas

• If you maintain a very large number of files on your website, it can have a substantial negative effect on performance and stability, especially if they are all contained in the same directory. If your site requires a large number of files, maintain them in multiple directories;
• Using standard Views pager might cause performance issues because of additional COUNT query. Use Views Litepager instead.
• Some conditions prevent the use of an in-memory temporary table, in which case the server uses an on-disk table instead:
  • Presence of a BLOB or TEXT column in the table;
  • Presence of any string column in a GROUP BY or DISTINCT clause larger than 512 bytes;
  • Presence of any string column with a maximum length larger than 512 (bytes for binary strings, characters for nonbinary strings) in the SELECTlist, if UNION or UNION ALL is used.