Your new school’s website has been designed and built, your content has been added, and you are now starting to think about releasing it to the world. But, before starting your website launch process, you need to complete a few checks.
The design of a new website is nothing more than text and images that accompany it. Make sure there is content on every page before launch and move incomplete pages to the hidden areas of the website for removal later on.
Your news area should include recent articles, and your calendar should be populated with upcoming events. These feeds often make it to the home page and can make your website incomplete if it is empty or out of date.
With the introduction of data protection regulations, users now have the right to know what is happening to data collected by a website and how it is used. Along with other websites, websites for schools need a cookie popup or banner asking users if they want to accept or decline cookies when they first visit your site.
You should also ensure that your privacy policy is up to date and link it to the footer of your website for easy access.
Your school website is a valuable communication tool for your school, so you must know who can access your site’s content management system and any information that may be stored within it.
The role of website data protection officer should be assigned to the website administrator, who may be responsible for monitoring user accounts and deleting users who are no longer in their school.
Once your new school’s website goes live, you want people to be able to find your site quickly and efficiently while typing in the name of your school into search engines.
To help with SEO, be sure to include friendly URLs on your key pages, add meta-descriptions for each page, define content, and have your keywords.
If your old website uses a different friendly URL or a completely different domain, you will need to implement 301 redirects to send traffic to the new
It is like forwarding mail when you move home. A redirect ensures that any visitor who sees the old URL is automatically redirected to the new one to access the content they want. Implementing redirects reduces the likelihood of page not found (404) errors and can help with SEO.
Once you are ready to launch your new website, you need to tell your school’s website provider. It would help if you gave them three to five days notice so they can do a final check, send you their DNS instructions, and put everything together to help you get a successful launch.
Once your website is up and running, it is time to tell the world about your new investment.
Social media is a great way to spread the word and share your new designs with your community. Make sure to tag your new provider in any of your posts, as this will allow them to celebrate with you and share your website with a broader audience.
You can also choose to display your website at an assembly, parent newsletter, or other communication channels. Whatever you decide to do, be sure to celebrate the completion of your project and the hard work you put into improving your school website design.