Checklist of tasks before going Live

[ASPDNSF Staff - Jon]

Here are a dozen tasks you should consider before going "Live" with your website. These tasks will increase security and speed-up performance of your store.

Enable HTTP Compression
Optimize your bandwidth by GZipping static and dynamic content. See this blog for more information.


Add a P3P Privacy Policy & Compact Privacy Policy
Your sites' cookie can be blocked if your site doesn't have a P3P Privacy Policy. See this blog for more informaation.


Add an SSL Certificate
Customers look for the "closed lock" on your site when they want to checkout. A SSL Certificate is not only good business, for many Gateways it's required. The brand of certificate rarely matters anymore, so don't get talked into a $300/yr certificate when a $30 one will do the same thing.


Turn off Debug Mode
Edit your web.config file, and search for "debug". Make sure you set it to false (debug="false"). This will improve your website load times, and overall performance.


Rename Admin folder
"Admin" is easy to guess, so rename your Administration site. Then set the AdminDir AppConfig to the name of the new folder, so the store will know where to find it.


Lock-down your Administration site
Require a Windows Authenticated login for your admin folder. You can request this via your hosting company.


Re-compress product images
You can maximize your bandwidth, and even double your throughput by heavily compressing your product images. This blog has more information.


Set-up redirects for non-www requests
If you want to make sure *all* requests go to your www-site instead of your non-www site, setup a redirect in IIS. Here's how.


Review robots.txt
Make sure that you're not excessively-blocking search engine spiders. Consider the images folder... do you want your product images to be searchable? Have you added any custom pages that you don't want indexed?


Generate MachineKeys
Open the web.config file, and search for "MachineKey". Every site should have a unique set of validation and decryption keys. You can generate your own here.


Set a memory limit for your AppPool
Here's a good whitepaper (somewhat dated, but still accurate) on how to configure the AppPool for your web application.


Remove unused files from the site
Any files that your site doesn't use should be removed for your site (don't delete the file, just move it off the site in case you need it later). After removing any file, be sure to test your site to ensure you didn't break any functionality. Here's a list of files that are often removed:

ajaxPricing.aspx
ajaxShipping.aspx
auctioncheckout.aspx
authnetpost.aspx
bestsellers.aspx
cardinalauth.aspx
cardinalecheckauth.aspx
cardinalecheckform.aspx
cardinalechecknotify.aspx
cardinalecheck_process.aspx
cardinalform.aspx
cardinal_process.aspx
clickout.aspx
internationalcheckout.aspx
lat_account.aspx
lat_driver.aspx
lat_getlinking.aspx
lat_signin.aspx
lat_signout.aspx
lat_signup.aspx
nxfeed.aspx
ogone_postsale.aspx
ogone_return.aspx
paypalcancel.aspx
paypalexpressok.aspx
paypalnotification.aspx
paypalok.aspx
paypalok.aspx.cs
recentadditions.aspx
recentcomments.aspx
requestcatalog.aspx
scriptedrecurringimport.aspx
searchnx.aspx
secureauth.aspx
secureauthhsbc.aspx
secureform.aspx
secureformhsbc.aspx
secureprocess.aspx
secureprocesshsbc.aspx
sendform.aspx
staff.aspx
twocheckout_return.aspx
worldpayreturn.aspx

Set a custom error page and enable custom errors

In the web.config file there is a "customErrors" element. When you are convinced that your site is working properly you should set customErrors to On and create a static .htm page to be shown to your customers when an error occurs on the site. This will A) prevent your customers from seeing an ugly .NET exception if an error does occur, and B) will prevent your site from disclosing potentially sensitive information about your hosting environment such as the database name (in the case of a SQL error) or disk path of your site.

Hopefully, your site will become better performing and be more secure by performing these 13 simple tasks.


Note By Dan: I added custom errors to Jon's list. This is an important, but often missed step when going live.

[Alkaline]

Does HTTP compression really apply? All the product pages on the storefront are dynamically generated

[ASPDNSF Staff - Jon]

Absolutely! The output of an aspx page can be compressed just like any other page. Markup, javascripts, and CSS can all be GZipped and cached by the server before being delivered.

[estore]

Jon said:
Turn off Debug Mode
Edit your web.config file, and search for "debug". Make sure you set it to false (debug="false"). This will improve your website load times, and overall performance./quote

Do we turn BOTH debug settings to false??

there is two:
Set compilation debug="false" to enable ASPX debugging.
Set compilation debug="false" to insert debugging symbols...

false for both?

Thanks

[kentrob]

Ho hum

http://validator.w3.org/p3p/20020128...refront.com%2F

[kentrob]

This list is really really useful thanks. I noticed that the P3P blog entry talks about using IIS or an HTTP handler to set your policy but you can also do it from source HttpContext.Current.Response.AddHeader or use a link tag <link rel="P3Pv1" href="some uri">. I'm not sure about the browser support for the latter method.

See http://www.w3.org/P3P/validator/20020128/document

Rob

[DanV]

Set compilation debug="false" to enable ASPX debugging.
Set compilation debug="false" to insert debugging symbols...

Actually, setting compilation debug="false" disables debugging symbols, but yes, they should be set to false for live sites. This can have a significant performance impact.

Another important step:

Set a custom error page and enable custom errors

In the web.config file there is a "customErrors" element. When you are convinced that your site is working properly you should set customErrors to On and create a static .htm page to be shown to your customers when an error occurs on the site. This will A) prevent your customers from seeing an ugly .NET exception if an error does occur, and B) will prevent your site from disclosing potentially sensitive information about your hosting environment such as the database name (in the case of a SQL error) or disk path of your site.

[ASPDNSF Staff - Jon]

@estore: There should be one line that looks like this:
<compilation debug="false" defaultLanguage="c#">

If debug="true", ASPX debugging is enabled by inserting debugging symbols into the compiled page. It should be "false" once you go Live.

@kentrob: There are two types of Policies, the Policy contained in XML files in your "P3P" folder, and the Compact Policy, which is a string of letter combinations.

The XML files are used to generate the "Privacy Report" in IE (View > Web Page Privacy Policy). I think the Compact Policy (the string of letters) is used to decide whether to accept the cookie under High Privacy.

I use both types of Policies, and I insert the Compact Policy into the Header using IIS Manager (website > right-click Properties > HTTP Headers tab > Custom HTTP Headers). This seems like the quickest method to me.

RE: Your validator link. I have no input into the design of that site That's all the higher-ups.

[kentrob]

Okay. I think you can also add the reference to the policy file programmatically and with a link, which is useful for people who don't get access to IIS on their hosted servers.

Rob

[estore]

Thanks I got the web.config file changed.