Azwar Launch Task Manager

Azwar Launch Task Manager — Site Checklist & Launch Assistant

📍 About Project

🚀 Azwar Launch Task Manager is a free WordPress plugin I built, submitted, and got approved on the official WordPress.org plugin directory. It solves a problem almost every first-time site owner runs into: WordPress will happily let you launch a site with a default tagline, no backups, no security hardening, indexing switched off, and a "Hello world!" post still sitting on the homepage — and it will never once mention any of that.

The plugin turns launching a site into a guided checklist. Fifty tasks are organised into ten categories — Basic Setup, Security, Design & Theme, Essential Pages, Performance, SEO Basics, Analytics, Backup, Pre-Launch, and Launch Day — and each one is written for someone who has never touched WordPress before. Every task carries a plain-English description, a "Why it matters" note explaining the consequence of skipping it, and a deep link that drops you on the exact settings screen the task is talking about. No hunting through admin menus.

Progress is tracked without any friction. Each task can be marked Not Started, In Progress, Complete, or Skipped — Skipped matters, because plenty of tasks legitimately don't apply to every site — and the status saves instantly over AJAX, with an overall percentage and per-category breakdown updating as you go. A dashboard widget puts that progress summary on the main WordPress dashboard so the checklist stays visible instead of being forgotten after day one.

Getting through the WordPress.org plugin review shaped a lot of the implementation. Every AJAX endpoint verifies a nonce and re-checks the manage_options capability before doing anything; all input goes through sanitize_key() or sanitize_text_field() after wp_unslash(); every string is wrapped for translation against the plugin's text domain; and the whole thing is namespaced under WPLC\ with a clean class-per-responsibility layout. There's a proper uninstall.php that removes the plugin's options rather than leaving rows behind in wp_options.

The plugin is also deliberately restrained about what it touches. It runs only in the admin — no shortcodes, no front-end output, no "powered by" link, no scripts on the public site. It makes no external API calls; every task status lives in the site's own database. That was a design decision, not just a review requirement: a plugin that helps you launch a site shouldn't quietly become part of the site you launched.

Every task card carries the same four things: what to do, why it matters, its current status, and a button that takes you straight to the screen where you do it. Category tabs let you work through one area at a time, and the progress bar reflects the whole checklist as you go.

✨ Features

🗂️ Guided Checklist

• 50 tasks across 10 categories — Basic Setup, Security, Design & Theme, Essential Pages, Performance, SEO Basics, Analytics, Backup, Pre-Launch, Launch Day
• "Why it matters" notes on every task, so the checklist teaches instead of just instructing
• One-click deep links straight to the relevant WordPress settings screen
• Recommended plugins where a task needs one — Yoast SEO, Wordfence, UpdraftPlus — linked ready to install

📊 Progress Tracking

• Four task statuses — Not Started, In Progress, Complete, Skipped
• Instant AJAX saves with no page reloads
• Overall percentage plus a per-category completion breakdown
• Dashboard widget surfacing launch progress on the main WordPress dashboard

🧑‍💻 Built for Beginners

• Written for non-technical, first-time site owners
• Onboarding tour and welcome banner for first-run guidance
• Skippable tasks for anything that doesn't apply to a given site
• Mobile-friendly admin — usable from a phone or tablet

🔒 Privacy & Footprint

• Admin-only — no front-end output, no shortcodes, no "powered by" links
• No external calls — every task status stays in your own database
• Clean uninstall — plugin options are removed on deletion

🛠️ Technology Stack

• Platform: WordPress 5.5+ (tested to 6.9), PHP 7.4+
• Architecture: WPLC\ namespace, class-per-responsibility (plugin bootstrap, checklist data, admin page, dashboard widget, status manager, AJAX handler)
• Frontend: Vanilla JavaScript and CSS — zero build step, zero dependencies
• Persistence: WordPress Options API, one prefixed option per task status
• Security: Nonce verification and manage_options capability checks on every AJAX endpoint; all input sanitized after wp_unslash()
• i18n: Fully translation-ready against the azwar-launch-task-manager text domain
• Distribution: Reviewed and approved on the WordPress.org plugin directory under GPL-2.0-or-later

📲 Contact Info

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📩 E-mail: r.azwar42@gmail.com
🧳 Linkedin: Rao Azwar Lin
👨🏻‍💻 GitHub: Rao Azwar

Made with 🖤 by @raoazwar