I would say:
- Know Why: This is critical. This is what Tammy did first. She sat down and wrote an "about" page that explained why (and how) this site was going to make people's lives better. You'd better be convinced yourself. Come up with specific examples of what is wrong with the status quo. Turn this into an About page.
- License: Pick a license. I only say this because it's probably almost legally impossible to change your license after the fact, so decide if it's a CC license or if you own everything, or what.
- Attribution: If you do choose an open license, I suggest the attribution page as well. I blatantly stole the idea from Jeff Atwood and StackOverflow, basically because it prevents someone from just dumping your site and cloning it later (well, legally anyway). It won't matter at the beginning, but it's very easy, so why not do it.
- Share Feature: Make sure you include some easy mechanism for visitors to share their site with friends. We used the AddThis button because it was so easy and compact. You definitely want a way to share by email, and then make sure you know how the people in your target community will communicate, and make sure that's covered. Remember, personal referrals are the most effective way to spread the word because we trust our friends to not spam us with irrelevant information.
- Logo: Must be 250x69 pixels. Doesn't have to be complicated. If you have no design sense, consider running a competition on 99designs but make sure you don't ask for anything complicated. Stylized text is about the best most of them can do. Anything more complicated and I guarantee that parts of it will be plagiarized. If you want to go cheap, just use your favorite drawing package. I actually did ours in XAML (you use the tools you know) and just did a screenshot. If anyone wants the XAML to start with, email me at scott {at} moms4mom.com and I'll email you the file. You'll need Visual C# Express at least though. You can also customize your favicon (32x32).
- Theme: Pick a color scheme. I suggest getting a designer involved. If not, I suggest finding two complementary colors on the color wheel that look good, and just go lighter and darker for each one from there. I suggest trying to do something as different as possible. Background image? Sure why not (not an actual StackExchange site).
- Analytics: Get Google Analytics installed in the footer of your site. Make sure you configure it to exclude your own visits:
a) Create a new Static Page in your site (admin->content->static pages). Uncheck the box that says Use Default Template. Give it a path like /noreport then paste the following into it (replace YOUR TRACKER NUMBER GOES HERE with your tracker number):
<html>
<head>
</head>
<body onLoad="javascript:pageTracker._setVar('no_report');">
<h3>This computer/account excluded.</h3>
<script type="text/javascript">
var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");
document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));
</script>
<script type="text/javascript">
try {
var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("YOUR_TRACKER_NUMBER_GOES_HERE");
pageTracker._trackPageview();
} catch(err) {}</script>
</body>
</html>
b) Go to your Google Analytics account. Go to Analytics settings (upper left). Go to filter manager (lower right). Click Add Filter. Give it a name. Select Custom Filter. Choose Exclude. Filter Field: User Defined. Filter Pattern: no_report. Add your website in at the bottom, and Save changes.
c) On every account on every computer that you regularly access the site from, make sure you go to that URL first (http://yoursite.stackexchange.com/noreport) and then you're good as long as you don't erase your cookies. EDIT: I also suggest you go to this page from both your custom domain and your stackexchange subdomain if you have both.
- FAQ: Customize the FAQ for your audience. Also, write some faq tagged questions and answers of your own to help people who might have a question about how to use your site. You're welcome to take any of the ones from moms4mom (if you follow the attribution requirements, of course! :)
- Ad-Spots: You can hide them or you can put something worthwhile in them. We used the banner spot for an AddThis button. The sidebar has a mission statement, a share button, and the facebook fan page badge. The banner-low has a message saying you can ask a question anonymously (I was hoping to get some of the googlers to ask more questions, but as far as I can tell, it's not working at all). The sidebar-low is a great place to trade topic links with other StackExchange sites.
- Questions: We found people are much more willing to answer a question than to ask a question. You may find that questions are more valuable than answers to your early site because it encourages participation. Get a good list of questions from your friends or people in the community. Ask them if they'd be willing to post the question themselves.
- Tags: Anyone can create a tag before there are 100. Figure out what general categories you want to have, and be ready to retag as the questions are asked. Fill in the example tags in the customization section.
- Ask for help: Join the other administrators over at the StackExchange Google Group. That'll give you a direct connection to us by email, we can share more detailed information than would be applicable on meta.SE, and we can get to know each other. Also join our petition to get Joel to spring for a StackExchange Administrator party in either Vegas or Hawaii. :)
Don't be afraid to tell people early. It doesn't have to be perfect. You can edit it any time.
Good luck!
