Congratulations on putting the finishing touches on your site! Before you hit that "make site public" button, you'll want to go over the following checklist to make sure your site will function as intended:

  1. On your homepage at the top of the content area, click on the "Page Setup" button. Expand the "Sharing and Search" area to add a meta description. This will make sure your page displays correctly in search results (for more information, see this article from moz.com).
  2. Go to Admin > Commerce and make sure all payment types you wish to receive are showing up as "Valid" on the Payment Methods tab.
  3. Inside Admin > Settings, click on the Integrations tab. If you plan on adding Disqus comments, or Google Analytics, you should do this here.
  4. Inside Admin > Settings, click on the Domain tab. Follow the instructions on this page to set up your custom domain name by pointing our servers to your URL.
  5. Inside Admin > Settings, click on the Organization tab. Make sure all the information on this page is correct.
  6. If you are happy with the look and feel of your site, click on "Make Site Public" at the top of the settings. Note that this will remove the "share site access" link, as users will be able to freely register. To add administrators to your site after it is live, add them in Admin > People and change their permissions on their profile.


Other things you can do to increase your website's visibility:

  • Make sure all of your old links are redirected to your new site via 301 redirects. This can be found on your host provider's settings page. Click here for another helpful article from Moz.com on redirects.
  • Get linked from other locations. Get in touch with bloggers and put the word out that you have a brand new website. The more traffic your site gets, the more search visibility you get.
  • Add content to your site. The more your site provides, the more hits you get, the higher you appear on search lists.