Skip to content
iSkllsSign up free

Ship a website

From an empty repo to a fast, live, indexed .com that takes payments.

15 skills · 80 steps in total

  1. 01Plan a first sitemapThe 4-7 pages your first website needs, so every CTA and success metric has a page.Purpose:: List the pages of the first website.
  2. 02Pick an inspiration websiteLock one famous, live product site whose structure your first website will follow.Purpose:: Lock the main inspiration URL: the live site your first website follows in structure and craft.
  3. 03Prove the fit in one sentenceSay why this project is a perfect fit for you, with evidence of what you already have.Purpose:: Say in one concrete sentence why this project is a perfect fit for you.
  4. 04Build the best alternative frontendTake the best part of each direct competitor plus what visitors in the space expect, and build it better.Purpose:: Build the perfect alternative to your direct competitors: their best parts plus what visitors in this space are used to.
  5. 05Apply a brand to a built siteSwap colors, fonts, logos and images to your brand without moving a single block.Purpose:: Put your brand onto a built frontend without moving anything.
  6. 06Make the site actually workWire login, payments, the core feature and every link, without touching the design.Purpose:: What you promised and what competitors basically offer all works, on the design as it is.
  7. 07Add Google sign-inOne OAuth client per project, redirect URIs for live and local, secrets only in env.Purpose:: Visitors sign in with Google on the project, live and local.
  8. 08Add payments with your own checkoutA free plan plus paid tiers, paid on your own page with Stripe Elements, never a hosted checkout.Purpose:: Visitors start free and can upgrade to a paid plan on your own checkout page.
  9. 09Serve images from a CDNCompressed WebP copies on a CDN, originals kept, your app server serves zero image bytes.Purpose:: Project images load fast and cheap from a CDN; the app server serves zero image bytes.
  10. 10Quality control a siteTurn your design standards into one checklist and check every public page, desktop and mobile.Purpose:: Before you optimise, every standard is present on every public page.
  11. 11Connect a custom domainPoint your .com at your host and your images subdomain at your CDN, both on https.Purpose:: The project serves on its own .com: site on the host, images on the CDN, both https.
  12. 12Write account emails in your brand voiceSix account emails and a sender that speak in your narrative's voice: short, in character, never one-note.Purpose:: The six account emails, and who sends them, speak in the voice of your narrative.
  13. 13Get every page to 90+ on PageSpeedMeasure, fix only what the report blames, and repeat up to three rounds.Purpose:: Every public page scores 90+ on PageSpeed, mobile and desktop.
  14. 14Set up Search Console and GA4Verify the domain, submit the sitemap and add a GA4 stream, all by API.Purpose:: Google can find, index and measure the site.
  15. 15Ship a clean sitemapOnly real public pages, every URL 200, self-canonical, with a unique title and description.Purpose:: https://<domain>/sitemap.xml is clean and every page in it is ready to rank.