launch marketing site on SGEN — complete guide

How to take your site from a blank SGEN install to a live, monitored marketing site

A fresh SGEN install is four phases from a professional live marketing site. This workflow phases the work into Foundation → Configuration → Content → Launch + Monitoring so you can divide the effort, track progress, and hand off a complete site without anything falling through the gap.

The scenario throughout is your business (yourdomain.com), a small-batch roastery going live on SGEN for the first time. Every UI label and screen name in this doc traces to the pile docs listed in related_docs.

Estimated total effort: 11–12 hours solo; 6–8 hours with two people splitting Foundation + Configuration from Content.

What is this for?

This is the end-to-end launch guide for marketing sites on SGEN. It covers every settings area that affects how your site looks, performs, and behaves for first-time visitors. Reach for it when you are launching a new site from scratch, migrating from another platform, or handing a site off to a client and want a single gate that confirms every launch-critical step is done.

It is not a reference doc for any single feature — each phase links to the relevant pile doc for detailed field-by-field guidance. This doc is the sequence and the gate: which things in which order, and how to know when the work is complete.

Good use cases

Example 1: Solo founder, first SGEN site. an editor launches your business on SGEN with no agency. She runs Foundation on Monday afternoon (~3 hr), Configuration on Tuesday morning (~2 hr), and Content across Wednesday and Thursday (~6 hr), targeting a Friday go-live. This doc is her project checklist — she ticks items as she completes them, screenshots the 30-item gate on Thursday evening, and flips DNS on Friday morning knowing nothing was forgotten.

Example 2: Two-person team handoff. a teammate (developer) handles Foundation and Configuration. an admin (content lead) handles Content. They use this doc as a shared brief — each phase has a defined end state, so the handoff is a single message: "Foundation done, ready for Config." The 30-item gate is the final review both walk together before the client presses go-live.

Example 3: Migration from a previous platform. a developer is migrating your business from a previous CMS. He runs the import first via Manage site backups, then picks up this workflow at Phase 1 — Foundation — to configure the SGEN-specific identity and appearance layer on top of the imported content.

What NOT to use this for

The ecommerce launch adds product catalogue, payment gateway, shipping zones, and order management — those require the separate ecommerce launch workflow.

Tracking consent must be live before real visitors land. A consent banner added after launch means you ran tracking on unconsented visitors.

The cookie consent banner and privacy policy copy here are starting points, not legal sign-off. Have a qualified solicitor review your disclosure copy before launch.

Run the smoke test at the staging URL first. Flipping DNS to a half-finished site costs you the first impression on launch day.

Each location may need its own SGEN install with its own identity and SEO configuration.

How this connects to other features

Before you start

• You are signed in to SGEN as Administrator or Site Owner.
• Your brand assets are ready to upload: horizontal logo at 2x render size, 32×32 favicon on transparent background, brand primary colour hex code.
• Your business contact details are written out (name, address, phone, opening hours) the way you want them in the footer.
• Your navigation structure is planned (which pages, which top-level labels).
• If you are migrating from a previous platform, your content import is complete. Run Manage site backups first and return here after.
• Your domain is accessible and you have DNS record access. You will need this for Phase 4.

Where to go

All four phases live in the SGEN admin left-hand navigation. The panels below are the main screens you move between during the launch:

Steps

/* your business — brand colour pins Add to Appearance → Custom CSS to survive future swatch changes */
:root { --color-primary: #6F4E37; /* coffee brown */ --color-primary-hover: #5A3E2B; --color-accent: #D4A017; /* warm gold */
}

<!-- Google Tag Manager — paste into Custom Codes, placement: </body> End -->
<!-- Replace GTM-XXXXXXX with your real container ID from tagmanager.google.com -->
<template data-safe="script" data-attrs="">(function(w,d,s,l,i){w[l]=w[l]||[];w[l].push({'gtm.start':
new Date().getTime(),event:'gtm.js'});var f=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],
j=d.createElement(s),dl=l!='dataLayer'?'&l='+l:'';j.async=true;
j.src='https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtm.js?id='+i+dl;
f.parentNode.insertBefore(j,f);
})(window,document,'script','dataLayer','GTM-XXXXXXX');</template>

Err: Form not found!

What success looks like

What to do if it does not work

Ready to launch? — 30-item gate checklist

Work through every item below before flipping DNS. Each item maps to a specific step in this workflow. Screenshot the completed list and keep it with your launch record.

Phase 1 — Foundation (5 items)

• [ ] F1. Site Title shows your real business name (not "My SGEN Site"). (Step 1 — Settings → General → Identity)
• [ ] F2. Logo and favicon are uploaded and showing on the public header and browser tab. (Step 1 — Settings → General → Identity)
• [ ] F3. Primary colour, fonts, and Color Swatch match your brand specification. (Step 2 — Appearance → Themes + Styles & Layouts)
• [ ] F4. Header nav, footer NAP block, and mobile hamburger are all live and correct. (Step 3 — Appearance → Header / Footer / Mobile Menu)
• [ ] F5. Homepage dropdown in Settings → General points at your designed welcome page (not the default posts list). (Step 1 — Settings → General)

Phase 2 — Configuration (5 items)

• [ ] C1. SEO Manager shows homepage row with SEO Title and Meta Description set. (Step 4 — SEO → SEO Manager)
• [ ] C2. Cookie consent banner appears in incognito. GTM is suppressed until Accept. (Step 5 — Tracking Consent → Settings)
• [ ] C3. Every old URL that moved has a 301 redirect to the correct new page. (Step 6 — Redirects)
• [ ] C4. GTM container snippet is in Custom Codes, placement </body> — End, status Active. (Step 7 — Custom Codes)
• [ ] C5. Test email delivers from Settings → Email. A named backup is saved in Migration → Backups. (Step 8)

Phase 3 — Content (5 items)

• [ ] P1. Homepage is Published and loads at the staging URL with on-brand design. (Step 9 — Pages)
• [ ] P2. All four minimum anchor pages (About, Contact, Privacy Policy, Cookie Policy) are Published and in the nav. (Step 9 — Pages)
• [ ] P3. At least three blog posts are Published. Blog index loads at /blog. (Step 10 — Blog)
• [ ] P4. Contact form submits correctly and delivers a notification to hello@yourdomain.com. (Step 11 — Forms)
• [ ] P5. Primary nav menu is assigned to the Primary location. Footer secondary nav links to legal pages. (Step 3 — Appearance → Navigation Menu)

Phase 4 — Launch (5 items)

• [ ] L1. Full smoke test passed in incognito: all pages load, no visible errors, 404 redirects to branded page. (Step 12)
• [ ] L2. DNS pointed at SGEN hosting. HTTPS padlock is active at the production URL. (Step 12)
• [ ] L3. Admin accessible at the new production domain. (Step 12)
• [ ] L4. Launch email sent to your list within 30 minutes of DNS propagation confirmed. (Step 12)
• [ ] L5. First live session confirmed in GTM or Clarity. (Step 12)

Cross-cutting (10 items)

• [ ] X1. Page source of homepage contains og:title set to your Site Title and og:description set to your Tagline.
• [ ] X2. Page source of homepage contains a LocalBusiness JSON-LD block with your address and phone. (Settings → General → Business Information)
• [ ] X3. Custom 404 page is set and tested: a non-existent URL renders your branded recovery page. (Settings → General → 404 Page)
• [ ] X4. Privacy Policy and Cookie Policy are in Tracking Consent → Excluded Pages. (Step 5)
• [ ] X5. "Anyone can register" is set correctly for your launch decision. (Settings → General → Identity)
• [ ] X6. Robots.txt is not blocking crawlers on the production domain. (SEO → Robots.txt)
• [ ] X7. Site submitted to Google Search Console with the production domain verified. (SEO → Google Search Console)
• [ ] X8. All images on Pages and Blog posts have descriptive alt text. (Pages + Blog — inline via image picker)
• [ ] X9. A second named backup is taken immediately after go-live. (Migration → Backups)
• [ ] X10. First-week monitoring rhythm is in calendar: daily SEO Manager + Forms + Redirects check for 7 days.

Next steps