WordPress is one of the simplest platforms for building websites. Anyone can build a website using WordPress; it’s super easy and takes very little time to do so. However, the website still needs to maintain certain standards before it’s deployed or made live. Hence, you need to make certain checks and conduct a few tests on your WordPress website.
To help you out, here’s a list of things you need to do before making your website live.
#1 Check the website requirements
Once the website is ready, checking the requirements it needs to meet allows you to determine whether you’ve missed anything or not, like a functional or design feature. It also allows you to do a quick assessment of the website, and determine how close you’ve stuck to the original plans, and whether or not you’ve made any major deviation from them.
#2 Make sure optimization plugins are working properly
Optimization plugins in WordPress make life a lot easier. They help you to optimize your images, keywords, speed, etc. You can simply install these plugins, activate them, and they’ll take care of the rest. It’s as easy as that.
However, before making your website live, you should consider checking these plugins, and whether they’re working properly or not. These checks have to be done manually, and separately for each plugin. For instance, if you’re checking the image optimization plugin, you need to see the sizes of all your images after optimizing them. If the plugins work perfectly, the image sizes would be much smaller than their original ones.
Some plugins (like SEO ones) can be checked manually, as well as by using other third-party URL/domain analyzer.
#3 Test the functionalities
To test a website’s functional features, you have to use 2 different approaches. In the first approach, you’ll use normal or regular data, and in the other approach, you’ll be using absurd data – as if you wanted to break the website or test its limits.
Test your website’s contact form; see if it’s working the way you intend it to. You should also test other features if you have them, like payment gateways, checkout features, etc. eCommerce WordPress websites will have a lot of the functional aspects that you have to check.
#4 Ensure website security
Security testing is one of the most important quality assurance checks for any application or website. Application security is to be ensured in the later stages of the web or software development process. Without taking the right measures to tackle security vulnerabilities, you’ll be exposing your app or website, and all the sensitive data in them to security threats.
WordPress has security plugins of its own, which you can use to ensure and test the security. You can also run these tests manually. Be careful while adding or removing security features, since they’re embedded deep into the backend of the website. One wrong move could see your entire website getting corrupted, or even lost.
#5 Conduct a cross-browser testing
Cross-browser testing is done by running the website in a variety of browsers and devices. Through this test, you’re checking the responsiveness of your website, and its ability to adjust itself (in terms of appearance as well as functionality) across the wide range of devices it’s being viewed in.
#6 Test the loading speed
Experts suggest that if a visitor has to wait for more than a couple of seconds for your website to load, they’ll leave. In reality, however, people might wait a few seconds longer, but will still be frustrated if the loading speed was slow.
Thus, it’s crucial that you test the website’s loading speed, and analyze the reasons if that speed is slow. In most cases, the loading speed is slow because of large image sizes. Other than that, issues with the JavaScript code, too many ads or too much flash content, etc. also contribute to this slow loading time.
#7 Check for any CSS/HTML errors
Usually, WordPress themes will take care of all your design needs. However, every once in a while, you’ll probably make a small change to the HTML or CSS code, simply because you didn’t like something from the original theme. If you have indeed done so, you’ll also have to check those changes that you made and see whether they’re still there or not. This is because every time you make a change in a feature, a certain part of the code is overwritten by the new changes. What’s to say that one of those changes that you made hasn’t overwritten the changes you made to the HTML or CSS file?
Once these checks and tests are completed, you’ll have a fully functional WordPress website without any sort of bug or security issues. Thus, you can make it live without having any second thoughts.
