16 things to check before launching a CMS based website (e.g. Drupal)

May 20, 2009 - Jordan Willms

It is always smart to sanity check a website before deploying it into a production environment. Whether this is a brand new website, or a upgrade to an existing website, there are a laundry list of things to check before proceeding. Humans are forgetful people. Checklists are not. That is why Work at Play created a "Before Launch Checklist" are part of our Process Library (which we'll slowly be publishing out over this blog as time goes by) Here is the checklist (which can also be downloaded in PDF above). This is by no means an exhaustive list.

Design

• If this is a website, does it have a custom favicon?
• Has the entire site been proof read? Who did it?
• Have you checked all the standard browsers? FF/IE/Safari/Chrome?
• Does the site still work with Javascript off? Who tested this?
• Are all pages W3C standards compliant? Who checked?
• Have all design assets been packaged for delivery to the client? (e.g. PSDs, FLAs, etc)

SEO Basics

• Are titles SEO friendly? Are meta title & description added?
• Does the client have an analytics package? Has the code been integrated?
• If the is an XML Sitemap, has the XML sitemap been submitted?
• Is the page's title in an H1 tag? (Not the site name!)

Drupal/CMS (if applicable)

• Make sure automated tasks are setup (i.e. cron or cron.php)
• Have development modules been deactivated removed from the production website?
• Is this an upgrade? Has the maintenance page been styled? Has the client been notified about the outage?
• Are on-screen error messages disabled?
• Are performance settings turned on? Caching? Compression?
• Is there a backup strategy for files & database?

This checklist is living document -- please let us know anything you believe we are missing and we'll improve the list.

Work at Play on Virtual Goods News about Aria Partnership

May 14, 2009 - Jordan Willms

Our friends at Aria were featured with us in Virtual Goods News yesterday. This was the official announcement of our partnership to further develop Velocity, the integrated virtual goods management and billing system. Check out the article on Virtual Goods News

Links for Friday May 1st, 2009

May 01, 2009 - Jordan Willms

Work at Play employees love sharing interesting reads, videos and awesome applications with each other. We do this through FriendFeed, Twitter, Facebook and sometimes even Email. These links tend to be across a variety of disciplines ranging from Social Media to Design to Development to "Just Plain Awesome".

Here is some resources we suggest you check out over the weekend:

• Why you have to engage in social media, even if you don't want to
• Periodic_Table_of_Typefaces_large.jpg (JPEG Image, 3150x2100 pixels)
• In Defense of Eye Candy via A List Apart
• DrupalCon DC videos to watch (for those who love Drupal)
• Google: the limitations of design by data - Interesting thoughts on the Google Engineers vs. Designer issues

10 common social media marketing questions answered

April 21, 2009 - Jordan Willms

At Work at Play, we get an almost constant stream of questions regarding social media technologies and social media marketing. I've dug back through a vast array of emails and pulled out many questions we've received to summarize here for you.

Employment Opportunity: Seeking Drupal Developers (Ninjas) and Themers

April 13, 2009 - Jordan Willms

Hey ya'll. We are growing and we love Drupal. We are hiring peeps with Drupal skills (developers or themers).

Who are we?

We are Work at Play, a small 25 or so person company leading some of the most innovative projects in social media. We work with clients like Viacom/MTV/Brash Entertainment/NBC to make the web a better and more interesting place.

David Usher is on "Deqq"

April 09, 2009 - Jordan Willms

David Usher is an amazing musician. He also "gets" social media (unlike many record companies and artists out there). He's got a Twitter account, MySpace page, Facebook account, blog, Friendfeed account and much more. He loves his fans, and engages with them constantly throughout the day. How many other artists that you admire can you talk directly to? And to quote the Vancouver Sun, "David Usher is not only embracing social media as a method to reach fans, he's creating it." Two days ago at MESH in Toronto, David announced his use of "Deqq" on his own website, currently in beta. Deqq, a technology created by Work at Play, enables fans to interact directly with artists around their music, micro blog posts, and other rich media types. I often sit and watch David and his fans interacting in his branded Deqq Community. There is almost constant conversation, engagement, and interaction; There is a certain "buzz" in there. David is clearly on to something.