Ever thought that your website needs maintenance? Yes, it does! Don’t waste the effort after you have invested all the hard work and time to build and run it. In fact, after your website is done, website maintenance should be carried out regularly.
Here are 6 important website maintenance practices you can do at the beginning of 2019.
1. Check renewal date and renew domain name
Never forget to renew your domain name in a timely manner. Domain name is like the brand name of your website/business, and what people first see in the online world. Many disasters can happen if you let it expire.
For Exabytes clients, you may check your web services expired date on renewal webpage and do not forget to check domain expired date before too late.
Examine and update the copyright dates or any date-specific text and references on your website regularly.
Your homepage, the first thing your website visitors see should not contain any outdated information that could mislead your visitors.
2. Clear browser cache and cookies
Cache and cookies refer to the static data that is temporary stored in the browser in order to speed up the delivery of the website. This is good, for most of the time.
However, leaving the old copy of data in your browser might present an issue for the visitors — usually when a major update that involves styling, images etc. is done.
It is not a big deal, and it’s indeed a quick process. You just have to clear the site cookies, cached images and files. Once it’s done, your website will be updated to the latest view! So don’t forget to perform regular cache cleaning from time to time .
3. Ensure all forms are functioning well on different devices.
Check out all the forms on your website every few months. Try filling out the forms to make sure they are still usable and you can receive them at anytime.
To check if the forms are displaying appropriately, always load them on different devices (phone, laptop, desktop, tablet).
Forms such as “Contact Us” is extremely important for all websites, especially e-commerce websites because it is for customers to reach you or your business.
When customers can’t reach you, they lose trust on you. You never want to see this happen, right?
4. Fix all broken links
Have you ever clicked on a link that leads you to an error (404) page? Broken links affect visitor website experience.
In addition, your visitors may not be able to reach you via search engines. This is because search engine bots can’t find the pages that are supposed to be there.
Moreover, it’s recommended to perform an overall checking on your website for broken links every few months and fix them immediately.
Regular website maintenance ensures your website always has fresh and updated links.
Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools work wonder in checking your website for broken links automatically.
5. Security Updates
Security checking is one of the most important website maintenance practices you should perform monthly. Web developers and hosting providers are responsible for software updates, installation of upgrades, security patches, bug solves, etc.
As a website owner, always check all the plugins and scripts of your CMS to confirm they are all up to date and performing well.
Hesitation while making those updates may place your website at the risk of security attack. In fact, it’s a must for all website owners to secure their websites in order to maintain/increase website traffic and visitors.
Let’s look into the real cases happen in Singapore.
6. Backup
Last but not least, backup is certainly one of the most important when it comes to website maintenance. No one can guarantee that a website will never get hacked.
Another scenario is when performing website upgrades: shall any file is missing after an upgrade, you can always restore if you keep a backup.
In fact, website owners can choose to backup their files daily, weekly or monthly to ensure full recovery is possible whenever needed.
Good website maintenance practices can lead to better site performance, including shorter page loading time and better functionality.
For now, mark your calendar; jot down the date and steps to take for website maintenance before you forget. Remember, treat your website like your friends!
Hope you like this! Enjoy!
