Launch Checklist

These are the steps that we need to go through in order to successfully launch a new Tor Project website or portal.

1 month prior to launch

• Launch full portal on staging
• Set aside some time for a core set of people to fully test the website
  • On different devices/screen sizes
  • Different language sets - depending on what's been localised
  • Clicking through all page links
• Open issues on trac with findings
• Freeze all strings and content ready to be sent for localization

2 weeks prior to launch

• Ensure all tickets open during testing are closed
• Decide on languages for launch based on completion percentage
• Make a list of links for the new website
• Start working on launch announcement blog post

1 day before launch

• Final checks as above
  • Blog post reviewed and ready to publish
• Inform people (tor-internal) that this is going to happen
  • how to respond to users
  • how to report bugs
  • how to set right expectations about timelines for fixes

Steps During Launch

• Run jenkins job (if necessary)
• Update .htaccess for redirects (if necessary)
• Run a crawler to check for broken links

Day After Launch

• Press release, blog, twitter, etc...
• Monitor for broken links, redirects, etc...
• Monitor blog comments for issues - community team
• Monitor irc and deal with comments, issue reports, etc...
• Monitor Apache 404 logs for broken links
• Explain how to report issues/bugs/broken links and set expectations for time to fix