We continue our series in which we are revealing the website design process we’ve developed and refined over 25+ years developing hundreds of Christian church, ministry and business websites.
If you missed any of the 8 previous steps, I encourage you to go back and read about them because each step builds on the previous steps.
In this article we’re going to address the question… Once you have your church website development complete…
How do you ensure the successful launch of your new website?
There are 3 things that need to be done to ensure launch of your new website goes smoothly. The first two are only applicable if you had a previous website:
1) Implement Redirects from your old site to your new site
This is something that most people aren’t aware of and even many web developers overlook.
Redirects (specifically 301 redirects) perform two primary functions:
- A) Tell the search engines to apply the authority and search rankings earned by your old web pages to the new versions of those pages on your new website.
- B) Redirect any person who tries to visit to a page of your old website to the new version of that page on your new website.
If you don’t implement redirects, you will lose all the search rankings gained by all your web pages (except your homepage) of your old website. And if anyone has bookmarked or “saved to favorites” any of those pages of your old website, they will get a “Page not found” error when trying to access those old pages.
Creating 301 redirects usually involves coding, so I suggest having an experienced website developer do this for you.
2) Perform a Domain Name transfer
If your new website will be hosted with a different company than your existing website, you will need to change the DNS settings, so your domain name points to your new site. If your new web hosting company also provides domain registration, you may want to transfer the domain name to be managed by your new hosting company so that all of your website services are managed by one company.
If you transfer your domain name to your new hosting company, they should walk you through the process. It can take days or weeks to transfer a domain because there is a verification process. Therefore, if you want to have your domain name ready for your new site when the new site is complete, start the domain name transfer process 2 weeks prior to the scheduled launch of the your new website.
3) Install a SSL certificate
A SSL certificate will encrypt all the information being sent to and from your website. This also helps prevent someone from being able to steal the username and password you use when logging into your site. For all the reasons and steps of installing a SSL certificate, please read our article here.
If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail! ― Ben Franklin
Comment and Discuss
- What questions do you have about launching a new website?
- If you’ve launched a new website in the past, what additional tips can you share?
Interested in having an experienced team of website developers create a new custom-designed website for you? Complete the consultation request form below (mobile) or to the right (desktop), to schedule a call.
Continue reading… The inside scoop on our 10 step church website design process
