Production Deployment Checklist

# Production Deployment Checklist Shipping to production is more than running a build command. A short checklist catches most of the mistakes that cause outages or security incidents. ## Environment Variables and Secrets Confirm no secrets are hardcoded or committed to the repository, and that production environment variables are set correctly and separately from development ones. ## Error Monitoring Set up an error tracking tool (like Sentry) before launch, not after the first incident — silent failures in production are far harder to debug without visibility. ## Database Backups Confirm automated backups are actually running and, just as importantly, that a restore has been tested at least once. An untested backup is not a reliable safety net. ## HTTPS and Security Headers Ensure the app is served over HTTPS, and add basic security headers (Content-Security-Policy, X-Frame-Options) to reduce common attack surface. ## Rate Limiting Public-facing APIs without rate limiting are vulnerable to abuse and accidental overload from bugs in client code, not just malicious traffic. ## Logging Structured logs with timestamps and request IDs make debugging production issues far faster than scattered `console.log` statements. ## Rollback Plan Know how to roll back a bad deployment before you need to — whether that's a platform feature (like Vercel's instant rollback) or a documented manual process. ## Performance Baseline Run a quick Lighthouse or load test before launch so you have a baseline to compare against if users report slowness later. ## Conclusion None of these steps are complicated individually, but skipping them is exactly what turns a small bug into a production incident.