How to launch a site?

Last time I did this was five years ago

[basenotes]

The last time I launched a new site, all you had to do was throw in a few meta-tag keywords, submit to Alta Vista, and drop your URL in your sig in a carefully planned out Usenet campaign.

That site is doing very well, and has been growing more and more each day. Now, I'm launching a new site and realise, despite reading WebmasterWorld everyday, I'm completely out of the loop with this kind of thing.--- Google has pretty much deprecated Keywords; AV is no longer here in any real sense and does any one still use Usenet?

From what I have gathered I need to buy a ton of Adwords, sort out a lot of one-way incoming links and wait for Google to lift me out of the sandbox... or am I missing something?

[Essex_boy]

Thats about right, things have changed beyond your wildest imagination on the SE front.

[emodo]

I would be interested in this as well, I launched my last site 2 years ago, but I didn't know what I was doing.

[jbinbpt]

I would add submitting to Google sitemaps and dmoz to your list.

[johnyfav]

I think looking at brett's 26 steps is a good start.

I'm sure it's 26, i always get the number wrong!