As the owner of a website you are also the webmaster and one of your responsibilities is to make sure it is running smoothly just like any other aspect of your business. So you need to know how to maintain your website.
Here are some important items you should be checking on your website. Make it a reoccurring task in your calendar so you don’t forget!
Backup Your Website First
Prior to making any changes to your website make sure that you take a backup just like you would for your computer. If anything goes wrong you will have a copy of all files, content, and images that can be restored. You can install a third-party plugin to run the backup automatically for you.
Update Your Theme
It’s highly recommended to check if your theme needs to be updated for new features and security patches.
Check for Broken Links
Make sure all of your internal links are workings and also remember to check those that you are linking to externally as they may no longer be available.
Remove Unused Plugins and Themes
When you are testing different plugins and you finally settle on the one you are going to use, you may forget to remove it from the Admin panel. Get into the habit of going through your plugins and removing those you no longer need. Also, if you have other people working on your site it will make it much cleaner and less cluttered.
As with plugins remove any themes you are not using from your site.
Check Your Opt-Ins Are Working
If you have opt-ins to a newsletter or an offer check they are working and still connected to your email service provider and if you are selling check you are connected to your online payment system.
Clean Out Your Media Library
When creating new pages or posts we spend a lot of time searching for an image and are more often than not change our minds and upload another one. However, your media library will soon become full of images and you will lose track of what is being used. So to avoid this get into the habit of removing those unwanted images as soon as you change your mind.
Check Your Contact Form
When a person fills in your form and hits ‘Send’ is this email being directed to the correct person? If this is directed to someone other than you, and you have had a change of employee you may completely forget to update this page but this small change could be costing you, new customers or clients if their enquiry goes unanswered.
Check Your Error Page
When was the last time you checked your 404 page? I can hear people saying ‘why would I look at this?’ or ‘it hadn’t even occurred to me’. Take a look at this page, is it just an ordinary ‘404 Not Found’ error page? If so, now is the time to make good use of this page, add some personality, include a sign-up to a newsletter or an offer or direct your visitor back to your home page. Try not to lose a potential client purely because they have stumbled across a 404.
Do You Need Some Assistance?
If all of this seems too time-consuming, we can help to keep your website running smoothly, contact us for further details.