To follow on from last week’s blog regarding content maintenance
of your website, I’m going to talk about maintenance of the site itself.
Website Maintenance
Website Maintenance
The first thing is to check the site is up and running, I
know this is blatantly obvious, but how would you know if it went down? You can
set up software to track this on a daily/hourly basis and alert you should it
be unreachable, what you don’t want is somebody, especially a client, informing
you. It is important to have the error dealt with before it has caused too much
trouble.
Website backup is essential to insure yourself against losing
your data, whether from a virus or a hardware failure. Ask your hosting
provider what would happen to your data if you were hacked or their servers
crashed, ask how often your files are backed up, are they stored somewhere
safe, you could even ask for a monthly updated version of your site if your
site is changing regularly as an e-Commerce site often does.
One you know your site is available to view, and backed up,
you need to check its health. These show load times, server requests and link
checking. There are many free online tools that will check these for you, they
can show how long it takes to load an image. Use this info to reduce file
sizes where appropriate, what’s the point in having a large image when it will
only ever be shown as a 100 pixel by 75 pixel image on your page.
Use link checking to see how they are
performing, what is more annoying than using a link on a page and finding it
broken? This could be because it wasn’t set up properly in the first place or
you have changed the page content and forgotten to update the link, or it could
be the page you are linking to is not there anymore. Whatever the reason you
need find and correct these as soon as possible. Try running your site through validator.w3.org/checklink to find
any errors within your site, and make the time to correct them.
These are just a few of the things you can do to keep on top of the health of your site If you need any help, or just some general advice on what to do to maintain your site, just email me at Media City Way any time.
These are just a few of the things you can do to keep on top of the health of your site If you need any help, or just some general advice on what to do to maintain your site, just email me at Media City Way any time.
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