Before you submit your launch request
- Complete build-out of your website.
- Confirm the name and email of your DNS contact, the technical manager of your URL.
- If you are unsure, use an online WHOIS lookup tool to determine your Technical Contact.
- Delete or unpublish any test content.
- Check for and fix absolute links.
- Check for and fix broken links.
- Review Duke's web accessibility guidelines, in particular:
- Add alt tags to your images.
- Make your documents accessible (including Microsoft Office files and PDFs).
- Confirm videos meet video captioning requirements.
- Create descriptive link and button text – i.e., say "View all Events" instead of "See all" or "Click here"
- Implement URL redirects.
- After launch, it takes time for Google and other search engines to crawl the new site and update their links. If the URL of any critical or high-traffic page will be changing, consider adding a redirect from the old URL to the new.
- If you desire Google Analytics or Google Tag Manager on your new site and did not provide account information in your initial site request, send us your ID before launch to maintain continuity of data.
- Sites affiliated with Duke University Health System must follow DUHS policies regarding these third-party services.
- Decide what should happen to your old website after the new site launches, and inform your current web vendor of your plans.
- If you are replacing an existing website that is hosted at OIT or supported by Duke Web Services, you can specify your plans in our launch request form. We offer two options: a free backup file stored for up to 6 months, or a paid accessible archive site available for up to 3 months after launch (select this option if you must be able to access old content after launch).
- Submit launch request form.
- Sites@Duke Pro websites launch during standard business hours on Mondays through Thursdays. If you prefer to launch during a specific timeframe, please allow at least 2 weeks from the date you submit this request – to allow for the required accessibility review and launch processes. A passing accessibility review is required for final launch approval. We do our best to honor launch date preferences, though it may not always be possible.
Shortly before launch
- Complete any required accessibility fixes required by Sites Pro team.
- Coordinate launch date with Sites Pro team.
- Set a content freeze date with your team, when no further edits are made until launch is complete.
- Inform your team that the new site may display an "insecure" browser warning for up to 15-30 minutes during the launch process.
- Provide final approval for launch.
Immediately after launch
- Confirm you can log in to your same "-content" admin site with your existing Duke NetID user account.
- Review various pages of the live site to confirm everything looks and works as expected.
- Note: Your live production site now lives at your chosen URL, and your old ".cloud" staging site will no longer exist.
- Test your site search.
- Work with previous web vendor to take down and/or archive your old site.
- Promote your newly launched website – waiting at least 24 hours after launch, as it may take time for users around the world to see the new site.
- Test and configure your Google Analytics account.
- Set up Google Search Console account.
- To access your site's sitemap, visit https://[yoursite].duke.edu/sitemap/sitemap-0.xml