What needs to be in place first #
Going live is not a single button. It is the moment three things come together: your finished content, a place on the internet and your address. Before you start, the chapters Copy and content and Imprint and privacy should be done. Everything else you can still improve after launch.
Some web hosting (from around 3 euros a month), a domain (roughly 10 to 20 euros a year, often included with the hosting) and your finished, rebuilt Template. That is all. No database, no server expertise, no recurring licences.
The quality run: nothing invented left #
Your Template arrived with an invented person, invented numbers and invented quotes. That is deliberate, so you see a complete website instead of empty boxes. The most important step before launch is therefore proving that none of it is left.
Your AI can check this itself. The quality-check skill searches the whole project for the placeholders and reports every hit. The proof only counts when the search comes back empty.
Run the quality check and search the whole project for leftovers of the example identity: invented names, company names, phone numbers, addresses, example domains, invented numbers and testimonials. List every hit with the file and line.
Work through the list until it is empty. Pay special attention to the places a text search cannot reach: images with faces, logos and wordmarks, numbers inside graphics and the details in the machine-readable data at the top of each page.
The photos of the invented person in your Template are royalty-free images without the consent of the people shown. They must never look like they are you or your team. Replace every image with a recognisable face with a photo of your own, or take that section out. Motifs without people, such as rooms or objects, can stay.
The five must-haves #
These five points decide whether your website is ready. Everything else is improvement and can wait.
Your identity is everywhere
Name, company, address, phone and email are yours in every place. That covers not just the visible copy but the footer of every page, the contact page and the machine-readable details Google reads out.
No example proof left
Testimonials, case examples and numbers are either real and signed off, or they are out. A website with invented references is not only dishonest, it is legally attackable. When in doubt, one section fewer.
Imprint and privacy pages are filled
Both pages ship as empty placeholders carrying an instruction telling search engines not to include them. You add your own reviewed text and then remove that instruction. The whole chapter on this is Imprint and privacy.
The forms go somewhere
Contact forms ship without a send handler. Either you connect one, or you replace the form with your email address and phone number. A form that sends nothing is worse than no form at all.
The analytics decision is made
Your Template ships with a working consent dialogue but no active measurement ID. Either you enter your own, or you remove measurement entirely. Both are fine, half of each is not.
Producing the files for the server #
There are two kinds of Template, and this is exactly where they differ. One look in your folder tells you which one you have.
Template with an src folder
This is the usual case. Your website is assembled from building blocks, and one command turns them into finished pages. Open a terminal in your project folder and type:
- npm install · once, fetches the building blocks
- npm run build · creates the dist folder
A new dist folder now sits in your project. Only this folder goes to the server, and specifically its contents, not the folder itself. Everything else, your building blocks, the guideline, the knowledge folder and the skills, stays with you on your machine.
The most common reason is where the folder lives. In cloud folders like OneDrive or Dropbox file paths grow too long and the build fails. Put the project folder directly on your hard drive, for example under C:\websites\myproject, and try again there.
Template without an src folder
Some Templates are finished pages with no build step. You recognise them by an index.html sitting directly in the main folder. Here the build is skipped entirely: what you see is already what goes to the server.
What does not belong on the server are the explanatory files: anything ending in .md, the knowledge folder, the hidden folder holding the skills and the styleguide. They are for you and your AI, not for visitors.
Choosing hosting #
Your website is made of finished files. It needs no database and no running server process, so it runs almost anywhere and costs accordingly little. These three routes cover nearly every case.
| Route | Fits when | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Classic web hosting | You want domain, mailbox and storage in one place. Providers like IONOS, Strato, all-inkl or Hetzner. Required if your Template ships a contact form that actually sends. | from around 3 euros a month |
| Static host | You want maximum speed and nothing to administer. Providers like Cloudflare Pages, Netlify or Vercel. Forms then run through an external service. | usually free |
| Your existing provider | You already have hosting for an old site. The new website simply goes into the same directory and replaces it. | nothing extra |
If you cannot decide, take classic web hosting with a domain included. It can do everything the others can, is usually discounted in the first year, and you have someone to call when something jams.
Uploading, three ways #
Whichever route you take, the destination is always the same: the contents of your dist folder end up in your host's web directory. Depending on the provider that directory is called htdocs, public_html, www or simply the root directory. When it is right, the file index.html sits at the very top of it.
The file manager in your browser
The simplest route for a first launch. Log in at your host, open the file manager, go to the web directory and upload the contents of your dist folder. With many files this gets tedious, but for a first attempt it is the quickest to explain.
A transfer program
FileZilla and Cyberduck are free and built for exactly this. You enter the server address, username and password your host gives you once, then drag files across with the mouse. Always pick the secure transfer, meaning SFTP, not the old FTP.
Never write the server address, username and password into a file in your project folder. They belong in the password store of your program or your browser. If they end up in a file you upload, anyone can read them.
Straight from your project
If you change your website often, a small script that handles the upload pays off. Your AI can write it for you and exclude exactly those files that do not belong on the server. From the second time on, publishing is a single command.
Write me an upload script that sends the contents of dist to my web hosting over SFTP. The credentials should come from environment variables and never sit in the file. Please exclude the documentation files, the knowledge folder and the skills. Then explain in plain language how I run it.
Domain and HTTPS #
The domain is your address. If you bought it from the same provider as your hosting, you connect it in your account with a click, usually under something like domain settings or destination. If it lives elsewhere, you enter the server address your host gives you there instead. Either takes minutes, but it can take up to a day for the change to reach everywhere.
Then comes the most important switch: HTTPS. It produces the padlock in the browser and makes sure visitors see no warning. Every serious host offers a free certificate for this, usually called Let's Encrypt, and turns it on at the push of a button. Also enable the redirect, so anyone typing the address without https lands on the secure version automatically.
Finally, settle on one spelling, with www or without, and redirect the other to it. Both should work, but search engines should treat exactly one as your address. That too is a setting at your host.
The first walk-through on the real address #
Your website is now online. Before you show it to anyone, walk through it once like a stranger, and do it on the real address rather than the preview on your machine. Some faults only show up there.
- The phone first. Most visitors arrive on a phone. Open every page, scroll to the bottom and watch for anything that can be pushed sideways. That should not happen.
- Click every menu item. And every button. A link that leads to an error page is the most common launch fault.
- Actually submit the form. To your own address. Does the mail arrive? Does it land in spam? You need to know both before a customer finds out.
- Call up an address that does not exist. Append anything to your domain. Your own error page in your website's design has to appear, not the server's bare message.
- Test the consent dialogue. Decline once, accept once. It must load nothing before consent.
- Open the imprint and privacy pages. Both have to be reachable from every page and show real text.
Your AI can take over the technical part of this and hand you a list, instead of you clicking every link yourself.
Check the website thoroughly before launch: broken links, missing image descriptions, weak contrast, missing page titles and descriptions, sideways overflow on narrow screens. Give me a list sorted by urgency.
Registering with Google #
Google finds new websites eventually, but that can take weeks. Two steps make it noticeably faster, and afterwards you can see what people search for before they land on you.
Set up Search Console
A free tool from Google. You register your domain, confirm once that it is yours (usually through an entry at your domain provider) and then submit your index file. It lives at your address with /sitemap.xml appended and is already included in your Template.
Create a business profile
If you have customers in your region, this is the single most effective step there is. A Google business profile puts you on the map and in the panel beside the search results. Make sure name, address and phone number there match your website exactly.
How to prepare your pages for search in terms of content is covered in detail in the chapter SEO and visibility. Do not expect miracles in the first few weeks: a new domain takes time before Google trusts it.
When something is off #
| What you see | What causes it |
|---|---|
| A list of file names | The index.html is not at the top of the web directory but inside a subfolder. Usually the dist folder itself was uploaded instead of its contents. |
| Text with no styling | The folder holding the styling files is missing or was uploaded incompletely. Upload the full contents again. |
| Old content despite a change | Your browser is showing a stored copy. Reload the page holding shift, or open it in a private window. |
| A warning about an insecure site | HTTPS is not active yet, or the certificate is still being issued. This usually resolves within an hour, otherwise check with your host. |
| Subpages lead nowhere | The server control file is missing. Its name starts with a dot and some programs hide it. Switch on hidden files and upload again. |
| Accented characters look mangled | The file was saved in the wrong character encoding. Have your AI check the affected file and rewrite it. |
If you get stuck, describe to your AI exactly what you see and what you did last. It knows how your project is put together and usually finds the cause faster than any search online.
The checklist to tick off #
If you can say yes to all of these, your website is ready to launch.
- The search for placeholders comes back empty
- No image shows a face that is not yours
- Name, address, phone and email are correct in every place
- Imprint and privacy pages are filled and reachable from anywhere
- The instruction not to include those pages has been removed
- The contact form was submitted for real once and arrived
- Every menu item and every button leads somewhere
- An address that does not exist shows your own error page
- The padlock shows in the browser, HTTPS is enforced
- One spelling of the domain is set, the other redirects to it
- Every page has its own title and its own description
- Nothing can be pushed sideways on a phone
- The index file has been submitted to Google
A website is never finished, it just goes online at some point. If the list above holds, yours is better than most that have been running for years. The rest happens in daily use. How to carry on is covered in the chapter Maintaining and growing.