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Web App Production Launch Checklist

Hard 18 items · 2 hours
testuser's avatar
testuser Published 4 weeks ago
Technical

This checklist covers the essential pre-production checks and steps to launch a web application to production safely. It’s for developers, DevOps engineers, and release managers who need a concise, practical runbook to reduce risk and ensure observability, backups, and rollback readiness.

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  1. Verify environment variables are set to production values — Confirm API endpoints, DB connection strings, feature flags, and keys match prod.
  2. Store secrets in a secure secrets manager — Use Vault, Secrets Manager, or CI/CD encrypted variables; avoid plaintext files.
  3. Confirm SSL/TLS certificate is installed and not expiring — Check coverage for all domains, expiry date, and intermediate chain.
  4. Configure CDN for static assets and test asset delivery — Set caching rules, origin, and purge a sample asset to verify.
  5. Update DNS records and set TTLs for cutover — Lower TTLs before release if you need rapid rollback, then restore higher TTLs.
  6. Plan and test database migrations — Document migration steps, downtime windows, and fallback strategies.
  7. Test migrations in a staging environment with production-like data — Run full migrations on a replica to validate timing and schema changes.
  8. Take a production backup of database and uploaded files — Include snapshot, logical export, and file store backup before changes.
  9. Run production database migrations — Apply migrations during maintenance window and monitor for errors.
  10. Trigger production deployment via CI/CD pipeline — Use automated pipeline, blue/green or canary strategy where possible.
  11. Run post-deploy smoke tests and health checks — Verify main user flows, login, API health, and database connectivity.
  12. Configure error tracking and verify alert rules — Ensure Sentry/Datadog/stack traces are enabled and test an incoming error.
  13. Set up uptime monitoring and alerting channels — Add probes, set thresholds, and route alerts to on-call contacts.
  14. Configure recurring backups and retention policy — Automate DB and file backups with retention and periodic restore tests.
  15. Implement and test a clear rollback plan — Document steps, required artifacts, and test a rollback in staging.
  16. Set production logging level and remove debug flags — Switch to INFO/WARN, remove verbose debug output and sensitive data.
  17. Conduct a quick performance baseline and spot-check — Run brief load checks on critical endpoints to detect regressions.
  18. Update release docs, runbook, and notify stakeholders — Publish release notes, update runbook steps, and announce via Slack/status.
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