You’ve designed and built your site in TIME Sites. Is it ready to go live? Make sure you’ve checked each of these items before putting it out into the world.
For a quick check-list, did you:
Add favicon
Add website/page social images
Add website/page descriptions
Set site language
Add tracking
Set password protection/visitor registration if needed
Check for responsiveness in app, on different sized devices, or on Chrome’s device toolbar
Check that there's no more placeholder images/text left on site
All links are linked and working properly
Check if any buggy behavior on the live site has been resolved
Set up any necessary redirects
Purchase/know what custom domain you're going to use
Do a final runthrough of all content to make sure it's good to go live
Reach out to TIME Sites to let us know you plan on having your site go live on a custom domain so we can help you set it up.
More things to consider
Is my site responsive?
Make sure you’ve previewed your site on different devices, and that your design responds elegantly to the different screen widths. If you haven’t thought about responsive design yet, or you’re new to the idea, this article is a great place to start. TIME Sites offers simple, intuitive tools for making your website look good on any device.
Do all my links work?
Make sure that you’ve checked each of the links in your navigation, your footer, and within the copy of your site to ensure they’re working. It can be easy to overlook a missing link, or accidentally paste in the wrong URL as you’re working on your site design.
Am I using Master Pages where appropriate?
If you have design elements that appear on multiple pages of your site -- like a header or footer -- it may be a good idea to take advantage of Master Pages. This will let you manage the common elements from a single location, and drastically simplifies the process of making updates in the future.
Am I using Link Lists appropriately?
If your site has any kind of navigation, the easiest way to manage it is probably to use a link list element (rather than using individual text elements or buttons.) The link list is designed to make managing your site navigation as simple as possible. It supports dropdown sub-menus, and can even be synced to your site’s structure so that it automatically updates when you delete or add new pages.
However depending on your design, it might make more sense to use individual text elements for each link instead of a link list element.
Is my page structure more complex than it needs to be?
Because it’s so quick and easy to build by dragging-and-dropping in TIME Sites, sometimes you can accidentally end up with unneeded containers on the page. Take a look at your Page Structure Panel to check for rogue containers or elements that are unnecessarily nested. Simplifying your page structure helps you stay organized, and makes it easy to troubleshoot layout issues. (Using the Page Structure Panel to label the elements on your page also helps a lot in this regard.)
Does my site look ok on different browsers?
Your website may look a bit different on different browsers. In particular, if you’re using a lot of effects from the Filters Panel or Transform Panel, they may not always be supported on older browsers. If you’re expecting a lot of web traffic on old versions of IE, for example, you may want to check and see how the site looks in that browser, and make changes where needed to accommodate its limitations.
Is my site optimized for SEO?
There are a number of things you can do to improve your site’s visibility to search engines. Fortunately, TIME Sites takes care of some of them for you automatically -- but you’ll still want to do things like add page and site descriptions, add alt-tags for your images, add a favicon, and update your site's social image. For more information on how to optimize your site for SEO, read this article.