What does “Going Live” mean?
Going live can mean different things to different agencies, but for us, this is when we update the DNS settings* your domain registrar to point from your current hosting, to our hosting. When users enter your website address, the internet servers will send the request to the new site, rather than your old site.
This is when you would set up any redirects needed to the new site – any key pages you send out with previous email campaigns, social media link outs – so you don’t lose out on traffic if the website URL structure has changed.
*Domain Name System – these house your records for where your domain name is, and where it needs to point.
How long does it take to go live?
DNS updates need to reach servers across the globe, which can lead to differences in what users see. One person might see your new site right away, while someone else may still see the old one. This process can take anywhere from 15 minutes to 72 hours, depending on your host.
There’s a good tool called What’s my DNS (https://www.whatsmydns.net) and you can search for your URL to check how the DNS is doing. If over half of the countries are ticked and it is a stable connection, people all over the world will start to see your new website. If there’s less than half countries ticked, or the connections keep going from ticked and not – this is likely due to DNS caches held by browsers, ISP*s, or devices that haven’t fully updated yet.
*ISPs – Internet Service Providers
Why timing matters: When to go live?
We highly recommend clients to go live on a Thursday – it sounds random but there’s a few reasons (in no particular order).
- It allows Friday for any unexpected issues to be resolved before the weekend – there might be plugin malfunctions or other technical problems that need attention.
- It provides more than 72 hours for DNS propagation to occur globally, meaning that as long as no issues were flagged on Friday, everyone should be able to see your new site by Monday.
- It gives time for internet service providers (ISPs) and browsers to update their DNS caches, allowing any remaining cached records to expire, ensuring that all users are directed to the new site.
When should I announce my website launch?
We know clients get excited about a new website, but we generally recommend at least a 24 hour wait on posting about it and advertising on socials. This just gives the domain to “point to its new home”. Any plugins that need adjusting for the domain change, redirects, and caching can all have a chance to be updated, and you don’t have vast amounts of traffic whilst the website is trying to sort itself out.
What about my old site?
Once your DNS settings are changed, your old site might still being “hosted”, it is just not being told to sit on a domain anymore. If you need your old site for archiving or as a “just in case”, there are a few options.
- Get your web team or previous hosts to get you a download of your old site. It takes a bit of tech knowledge, but you can then locally host* your site
- Ask your web team to make a subdomain of your current site, for example “archive.example.com”. Whilst this shouldn’t be a long term solution,
If for some reason, the old site backup can’t be re-hosted elsewhere, and there’s content on the old site you realised was relevant after the go live date, there’s a handy tool that might help called the way back machine (https://web.archive.org/). This takes snapshots of websites all over the internet, and stores them for archiving purposes. This is a great tool if some documents get missed, you may be able to view or recover snapshots of your old pages, potential downloads if the HTML has been captured (not all of them may work, but it’s great in a pinch).
*Locally host means no-one on the internet can see this website, it is your personal “off the web” hosting so you can see the old site.
Sounds like a lot!
Hopefully your IT Department or agency will handle most of this for you, but it’s good to know the process and what to expect when you give the go ahead to go live.
Once the hosting has been switched, the DNS servers point to the right side, and it is all propagated fully, you can celebrate the launch of your new site!
One thing to keep in mind is, once the website is live, website maintenance is an ongoing project in terms of optimisations and making sure plugins and content is kept up to date. Want to keep your site running smoothly post-launch? Check out our guide on giving your website a spring clean to make sure your site stays fast, functional, and secure.
If your site has been live for 6-12 months, it might benefit from a bit of a website audit! This is to make sure that your new website is still answering “yes” to these questions:
- Does it work
- Does it run
- Can users use it?
- Can users find it?
- Does it look good?
Our website audit services will give you a clear picture of how well your site is serving you and your audiences. Book your audit here
