Production Readiness

A finished site is more than its pages and templates. This page lists what is easy to forget because nothing in a design mockup shows it, and what is worth confirming before a site goes live. It is a prompt to think and to record what you decided and why, not a gate: a given site may not need every item. Plan for these while deciding the site's structure.

Required CMS objects
• robots.txt and sitemap.xml. A full site ships both as CMS-managed objects rather than hand-written static files.
• Page templates. A complete site usually has a specialized template for each entity type it publishes (blog, tag, author, and folder; article and blog post; calendar and calendar entry; document and image; form and gallery), a generic template, a home page template, a landing page template, a 404 error page, a catch-all error page, a search page (or at least a working search template), and a contact page with a working contact form.
• Forms. Confirm that each form submits where you intend and that someone receives its submissions. Building and Handling Forms covers the options, and Custom Form Handling shows ways to handle submissions.

Search and indexing
• Include in Search. Leave it checked for most pages, but uncheck it for pages that should not appear in on-site search results, such as meta pages, private pages, thank-you pages, and pages driven by query parameters. For those pages also set Meta Robots, which for most means "noindex, nofollow".
• Tag pages. A Tag can have its own page with the same browser title, meta description, keywords, and include-in-search settings as an article. Fill them in for any tag whose page visitors and search engines will see.
• Redirects. A Redirect sends one URL to another. Use one when a page has moved, so old links and search results keep working, and when a link in the design is really an outside destination you want to manage in one place or track. Linking straight to an external URL is also fine; a redirect adds a single point of change and nothing else, so decide per site. A Redirect is a content object, separate from the {% redirect %} Liquid method that sends the current request elsewhere. How to Add Redirects covers managing them.

Media
• Folders. When a site has more than a handful of images or documents, organize them into folders so editors are not choosing from one long list. A picker field's folder filter can then narrow its choices to one folder.
• Image alt text. Alt is a property of each Image. Write it when the image is added, so every template that renders the image gets it (see Rendering Images).
• Image presets. Create an Image Preset for each size the design uses — card, thumbnail, banner — before templates refer to the preset codes (see Rendering Images).

Quality
Confirm the output meets the standards in Quality, Accessibility, and Rights: valid HTML and other output, accessible and mobile-friendly markup, only assets you may distribute, third-party resources served from the site where recommended, and any API key read from a custom site setting. If the site follows MPSS1, confirm the header and footer inputs and asset names in MPSS1 Basic Site Framework; if it does not, record why. For a full site package, also confirm the Full Site Package Requirements.

Visitors and consent
If the site uses personalization, decide what the session permission defaults to and how visitors allow or deny it. Permissions explains the default state and that the session permission can be set to allow by default in the site settings, and Personalization notes why that default may suit some sites and not others, for example because of GDPR.

Going live
Site Go-Live explains what going live means, and Adding a Custom Domain covers domains.