There are three things you should do to your website once you think its complete before you actually post it.

1. Validate the HTML and CSS.
2. Build an xml sitemap and register it with search engines.
3. Fix broken links and test, test, test.

Completing these 3 simple tasks will make the browsing experience of your site’s visitors imminently more pleasurable.

Validation of HTML and CSS

There is nothing worse than a site that doesn’t work in your browser. You can avoid giving this problem to you site visitors by validating your site. To validate HTML you can browse to the W3 HTML validator and enter your site’s URL. This will crawl your page and validate your HTML. Make changes to every item it finds fault with, some items will generate more than one error. Make sure you fix the warnings too. Its a free service and also lets you use icons that identify that you have created an interoperable website. Repeat the step with all the pages on your site.

So with  HTML out of the way its on to CSS which is almost the same process. Browse to the W3 CSS validatior and enter the url of your stylesheet. Remember to do it for all of them if you are using more than one. Same deal with the logos to show that you are a (CSS) law abiding citizen. You can place the logos in your own image dorectory to avoid the loading times it takes from the W3 sites.

Building a Site Map and Registering with Search Engines

Next up we need to build an XML map for your site and register the site the search engines. Building the map can be done by visiting XML-sitemaps and once again entering your sites URL. Enter the address of the front page and the script will crawl your site and create and XML file of your site mapped for the search engines robots. Save this file in your html_public directory. Then you need to visit Google’s Webmaster Tools and tell them where the site map XML file is being kept.  You will have to register or if you already use a Google service (eg Gmail) then you can just log in with that email address and password. Once you are registered you will have to prove to Google that you really are the owner of the site. Basically this involves putting a tag that Google gives you in the head of your index page. This is a good place to check back in with once your site has been crawled by Google’s robots. It gives you a breakdown on some aspects of what Google thinks of your site.

You will also need to place a line in your robots.txt file to tell other search engines where your sitemap is kept. Simply add:

Sitemap: http://www.mysite.com/sitemap.xml

This will tell the main search engines (Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and Ask) where your sitemap is kept. “Hang on my site has more than 500 pages, that tool won’t map my whole site”, you say. If you have generated more than 500 pages of content you are there is another option available to you. Using the unlimited Generator by the same provider as the free ones is well worth the $19.95 cost.

Fix Broken Links

There is nothing worse than ending up on a 404 Error page while you are browsing. Don’t put your site’s consumers through the pain by fixing your broken links before they find them. There are two providers already mentioned in this article who will point out your broken links. The first is the XML sitemap generator and the other is the W3 link checker. Track down the broken links and either fix or remove them. If your site links to external sites you should plan to carry out this step on a regular basis to ensure that all your links are still valid.

Test Test Test

Once your site is published and live, you need to check if any gremlins have snuck in. Start at you index page and do everything that your site has to offer. Follow every link, use every function, fill in and submit every form, do all you can do. Fix those things that are not working or not working well and retest. If the changes are major you may need to consider doing step 1 all over again. Hopefully these steps will have made your web site more robust and removed any frustrations to your visitors browsing experience.