Web Watch: Relaunching a Grand Old Web Site

Test, test and test again
Some of the launch problems GOP.com experienced can be prevented by a well-managed "soft launch" — a private launch during which site creators invite a discrete number of users to join the site, check out the features and report back on any issues they discover.

The GOP.com team might well have conducted a soft launch, but if so, it seems it didn't invite enough users or allow enough time to surface important issues. One notable example: The day of launch, site visitors stumbled across documents containing all of the site administrator information, including instructions, logins and passwords. Had there been a sufficient soft-launch phase, one of the test users could have spotted this potential security breach, and someone might have pointed out the implications of a blank "Future Leaders" page.