This checklist covers what to set up before you go live, what to verify after launch, and what to keep monitoring on an ongoing basis. It's designed for non-technical site owners, ecommerce stores, SaaS products, and anyone who needs their website to work reliably.

Before Launch

SSL / HTTPS

  • Your site loads correctly over HTTPS (not just redirecting from HTTP)
  • There are no mixed content warnings (HTTP resources loaded on an HTTPS page)
  • Your SSL certificate is valid and won't expire soon
  • HTTPS redirects work correctly (HTTP → HTTPS, non-www → www or vice versa)

A monitoring tool can alert you when your SSL certificate is approaching expiration — this is a common source of "site broken" reports that catch site owners completely off guard.

DNS and Redirects

  • Your domain resolves correctly from multiple locations
  • Any important redirects (old URLs → new URLs) resolve to the right destination
  • There are no redirect chains longer than 2–3 hops
  • There are no redirect loops

Page Load and Content

  • Your key pages (home, about, product, contact) load and display the expected content
  • No critical content is missing, blank, or loading from a broken data source
  • Images load correctly across key pages

Forms and Interactive Elements

  • Contact forms submit successfully and deliver the message to the right inbox
  • Signup forms create accounts and trigger confirmation emails
  • Any interactive elements (calculators, quote tools, booking forms) function correctly

Payment and Checkout (if applicable)

  • The cart accepts products
  • The checkout page loads completely — including payment form
  • A test transaction completes successfully
  • The order confirmation page appears after purchase

At Launch: Take Your Baselines

Before you start monitoring, you need a reference point for what "correct" looks like.

  • Take screenshots of your key pages in their expected state — this is the visual baseline for regression monitoring
  • Verify that your monitoring tool has a current, accurate baseline for each monitored page
  • Confirm that uptime monitoring is active and pointed at the right URL

If you take baselines after launch instead of before, you risk capturing issues in the baseline and treating them as "normal."

Ongoing Monitoring Setup

Uptime Monitoring

  • Uptime checks running on your main domain
  • Uptime checks running on any subdomains that host critical functionality (app subdomain, API, etc.)
  • Alert threshold set — how long before you get notified of downtime?
  • Alerts going to someone who can respond (not just a shared inbox nobody checks)

Visual Regression Monitoring

  • Key pages are being monitored for visual changes: home page, product/pricing page, checkout, landing pages
  • Alert notifications configured for visual diffs
  • A process in place to update baselines after intentional design changes

NorthDuty's visual monitoring takes periodic screenshots and compares them to the baseline. When a plugin update, a theme change, or a CMS edit shifts the layout, the diff catches it.

User Journey Monitoring

  • [ ] At least one critical journey is being monitored end-to-end
  • For ecommerce: add to cart → checkout → verify payment form loads
  • For SaaS: signup → verify account created; login → verify authenticated area loads
  • For lead-gen sites: contact form → verify submission succeeds
  • [ ] Journey checks running frequently enough to catch failures quickly (every 5–15 minutes)
  • [ ] Alerts configured to notify immediately on journey failure

NorthDuty lets you define these journeys in plain English — no code required.

SSL Certificate Monitoring

  • Alerts set for SSL expiration (at minimum 30 days in advance, ideally 60)

Post-Deploy Verification

Every time you push new code, update a plugin, or make configuration changes, run through this quick checklist:

  • Key pages still load and look correct (visual check)
  • Critical user journeys still complete successfully
  • No new JavaScript errors visible in the browser console
  • Redirects still resolve correctly
  • Payment form (if applicable) still loads and is functional

For a full breakdown of what deploys commonly break, see The 5 Most Common Ways a Website Breaks After a Deploy. For monitoring specifically focused on visual changes, see What Is Visual Regression Testing? A Plain-English Guide for Non-Developers. Each checklist area has its own guide: what uptime monitoring can and can't tell you, login monitoring, SSL certificate monitoring, and how to set up a public status page.

Incident Response

When monitoring alerts you to a failure, having a plan speeds up recovery:

  • Who gets the alert?
  • Who has access to fix the issue or roll back a deploy?
  • Is there a staging environment for testing a fix before pushing it live?
  • What's the rollback procedure for a bad deploy?

The Minimum Viable Monitoring Setup

If you're just getting started and want the most important things without overwhelming complexity:

  1. Uptime monitoring — know when your server goes down
  2. Visual monitoring on your most important page — catch layout regressions after updates
  3. One user journey for your most critical flow — verify checkout, signup, or contact form works

These three things, set up correctly, will catch the vast majority of failures before your users do.

Summary

Monitoring isn't a one-time setup task — it's ongoing infrastructure for your site's health. The checklist above covers the basics: uptime, SSL, visual integrity, and user journeys. Start with what matters most, expand coverage over time, and make sure alerts go to someone who can act on them.