11 Steps to Membership Management Success – Launching Your Site

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Step

What to do

Feedback

1

Is your site loading under your new domain name?

Check the necessary Wild Apricot steps for adding a custom domain.

If you are running an old website, you will log in to the domain control panel and point your domain to a new “A” record.

Ensure that your domain name registrar control panel is easily accessible pre-launch, so you can make the needed domain name record changes. You may wish to leave your old website running under an “old” subdomain like oldsite.mydomain.org.

There are a few more other domain name records you should add to avoid your email getting put into your members’ spam folder.

2

Go live on your online payment system (optional)

If you decided to take payments online, switch your online payment mechanism to “live.”

3

Check privacy settings for members

Test the privacy settings for members to make sure members are assigned default privacy settings for their profile. This is how their information will be displayed for the public and for other members, if at all.

4

Outgoing email address

If you want to send email on behalf of an organizational mailbox (rather than a default Wild Apricot mailbox) you will need to configure a custom domain and email settings.

• Configure and test your outgoing email settings.

• Send a test email to one or more administrators.

5

Install a security certificate

Since Wild Apricot sites are transactional, your organization will collect private information as well as financial data, and therefore must be secured with SSL. Thus, you should also purchase or obtain an SSL certificate before launching under a custom domain name.

Tip:

Use this free SSL certificate checker to check the quality of your certificate.

6

Test your website’s performance

Test performance and mobile responsiveness for both the public and members only pages, and fix any issues. Tip: Use Google’s Test My Site for the win!

7

Sit back and relax — you’re done!

This one may be the easiest—toast your new website and CELEBRATE!