10 Things To Do When Taking a Site Over

[Clinton]

Ten things I do when taking a site over.

In no particular order

1. Changing the Adsense publisher ID, the affiliate program IDs etc. and Google Analytics number


2. Checking if there's a htaccess and what's in it. Sorting out canonical problems, disabling directory listing (I don't want people seeing what files are in the folder) etc


3. Checking for 404, 403 and other error pages and creating them if they don't exist


4. Checking for a robots.txt, running it against a validation program (because it may look alright and still fail). Is there a sitemap?


5. Removing any identification files in root, like the file Google makes you upload for Google webmaster tools verification. Removing any personal files the owner stored


6. Modifying the copyright, contact us, about us and privacy pages. Creating the relevant email addresses and setting up redirects for catchall to a gmail address (gmail is good at dealing with spam)


7. Tweaking the conf files in Apache that control stats retention and log file rotation. Checking other server side activity such as cron jobs


8. Checking for favicon.ico and adding one if necessary


9. Doing a Xenu search for bad links and cleaning them up


10. Changing the TTL on the domain (which I usually reduce when moving sites over)


What do you do?

[rmills]

Ok I vote that this be stickied. Thanks Clinton. I never even thought of the TTL for the domain.

All I can add is that I usually take a look at the original site if it's still up and make note of any affiliate id's. Then I do a text search on the database export file (if the site is wordpress) or the site sourcecode. I've caught a few adsense blocks this way that I might have missed.

[mgallone]

Great list. Though I'd say that changing adsense and affiliate codes should be the most important thing- no use letting your traffic go wasting at any time

[hooperman]

These days I get privacy for my domain registration. If it's a Wordpress site I set up some kind of automated backup.

[rob]

I also add legal disclaimers where needed to forums.

I often drop a PM to frequent 'core' members as well saying a quick hi.

As for non-forum sites, very much as above, and the key thing I try and do is not much at all as large changes dont often go down well

[grynge]

Apart from the above I always fix the navigation menu to a css menu and make a user sitemap.