6 essential tools you should know before launching your website
Tags: webdev, testing, security, beginners
Published: 2020-07-03 13:45:56

---
title: 6 essential tools you should know before launching your website
published: true
description: 6 essential tools you should know before launching your website
tags: webdev, testing, security, beginners
---

Before you launch your shiny new website, use these tools to make sure that your site is compliant, secure, high performing, and can be easily discovered by your audience.

##HTML Validators

These tools look for invalid HTML on your site and show you the actual code and line numbers that you need to correct.

####[W3C Markup Validator](https://validator.w3.org/)

####[FreeFormatter](https://www.freeformatter.com/html-validator.html)

##Social Media Card Testing

Tests to see how your site will look on social media feeds when someone shares or posts it. Just enter your website address and they will show you the results.

####[Twitter Card Validator](https://cards-dev.twitter.com/validator)
 . [How to Create a Twitter Card](https://davidwalsh.name/twitter-cards)

####[LinkedIn Post Tester](https://www.linkedin.com/post-inspector/inspect/)

####[Facebook Sharing Debugger](https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/)

##Security Scanning

####[Mozilla Observatory](https://observatory.mozilla.org/)
Scans your site's infrastructure configuration to ensure that your site is safe and secure. You can also allow third-party tests to be run from Observatory. For example, a scan from ImmuniWeb will check if your site has SSL vulnerabilities.

####[SSL Labs](https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/)
Scans your site for SSL/TLS misconfigurations and compliance.

##Webmaster Search Console

These tools allow you to directly submit your website for search engine indexing. They also provide tools to measure the mobile-friendliness of your site. If you opt-in, they will periodically send you e-mail notifications if they detect an error on your site that would reduce search engine optimization.

Below are the three most popular options. Note that you will have to prove that you own your domain or are the owner of the website either by providing a specific DNS entry in your configuration or by adding a temporary meta tag to your site.

####[Google Search Console](https://search.google.com/search-console)

####[Bing Webmaster Tools](https://www.bing.com/webmaster)

####[Yandex Webmaster](https://webmaster.yandex.com/)

##Performance + Speed

Tests your site for speed and performance.

####[Google PageSpeed Insights](https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/)
This is basically a web-based Lighthouse.

####[WebPageTest](https://www.webpagetest.org/)

##Mobile Friendliness / Responsive

Tests to see if your site is mobile-friendly, shows you screenshots and provides suggestions on what you need to fix if your site is not mobile-friendly.

####[Google Mobile-Friendly Test](https://search.google.com/test/mobile-friendly)

####[Bing Mobile-Friendliness Tool](https://www.bing.com/webmaster/tools/mobile-friendliness)

##Summary

Once you've launched your website, you can continuously use the above tools to make sure that your site remains secure, mobile-friendly, and delivers to your audience at blazing speeds.

Happy websiting!

_You can find me on the Twitter - [https://twitter.com/eddieaich](https://twitter.com/eddieaich)_