← Course Index
The Definitive Senior Dev Release Checklist
🌐 1. DNS & Traffic Routing
- ☐ Domain correctly set up in Cloudflare DNS panel.
- ☐ Cloudflare DNS proxy enabled (Orange Cloud) for web nodes.
- ☐ SSL/TLS encryption mode configured to Full (Strict).
- ☐ HSTS headers activated on Nginx / Cloudflare dashboard.
- ☐ Redirect rules active (HTTP to HTTPS, WWW to apex or vice-versa).
🔒 2. Security & Secrets
- ☐ Database not accessible directly from public IP addresses (VPC private subnets).
- ☐ RDS security group restricted to accept incoming TCP traffic from EC2 server security groups only.
- ☐ All API credentials and secret tokens set as env variables / Secrets Manager.
- ☐
.env file verified as completely ignored inside local Git repository tracking.
- ☐ Docker container verified running under non-root user permissions (node, nginx, alpine, etc.).
- ☐
npm audit verification done, no critical warnings remaining.
🤖 3. CI/CD & Build Processes
- ☐ GitHub Actions tests and lint runs required to pass before manual or CD deployment.
- ☐ Production deploy runs tied to GitHub Environment manual reviews.
- ☐ Production Docker images tagged with Git commit SHA reference values (Never release using :latest).
- ☐ Automated caching configured for faster package install workflows in GitHub runner nodes.
📊 4. Monitoring & Logging
- ☐ Sentry integration validated in backend APIs and frontend UI configurations.
- ☐ Production source maps uploaded to Sentry server endpoints during build runs.
- ☐ Sentry alerting thresholds configured to push warning signals to team communications tools (Slack / Email).
- ☐ Uptime monitor check active, targeting app API
/health endpoints.
- ☐ Production logging configured to write machine-readable JSON formats (Pino / Winston).
- ☐ Log files rotated, keeping storage limits below disk partition capabilities.
🔍 5. Technical SEO & Performance
- ☐ Google Search Console ownership verified, sitemap.xml endpoint submitted.
- ☐ Google Analytics 4 tracking script injected, ecommerce or critical conversions configured.
- ☐
robots.txt file serving valid Disallow configurations.
- ☐ Page HTML documents contain valid
<link rel="canonical"> tags.
- ☐ Core Web Vitals checks pass: LCP < 2.5s, CLS < 0.1, INP < 200ms.
💾 6. Reliability & Backups
- ☐ Database automated daily snapshots active. Keep a minimum retention capability of 7 days.
- ☐ Restoration procedures tested successfully against staging/test databases.
- ☐ Rollback workflows built and tested (SSH/CLI run scripts or GitHub Action manual triggers).
- ☐ SPF, DKIM, and DMARC text configurations published to domain DNS configurations.
- ☐ AWS account budgets thresholds configured, budget warnings active.