Maintaining Your Web Site

Whenever I meet with clients to discuss a new web site, the subject of web site maintenance almost always comes up. “How much will it cost to maintain my site?” is the most popular question. This week I’ll answer the cost question along with a few other questions like: “Who’s Going To Maintain My Site?” “What Problems Do I Need To Watch For?” and “How Do I Find These Problems?”

After months of work you finally have your web site online and looking the way you want. Now you can sit back, forget about it and watch the money roll in, right? Not really. A web site needs to be monitored and maintained just like your car. Domain names expire, email addresses change and hosting providers’ change things. This is just a few of the things that can go wrong.

Who’s Going To Maintain My Site?

The first thing to consider when it comes to web site maintenance is “Who’s going to maintain my site?” A simple question but something you should decide before you need any help. On thing that has surprised me is that it’s almost impossible to find someone that offers a compressive maintenance plan for web sites. Most maintenance plans you find on the internet merely provide a set amount of time they will spend making updates you request.

So most maintenance plans don’t really watch your web site and monitor it for problems, they only fix what you request. This means they only provide part of the solution. They’ll fix the problem. You’ll still need to find out who’s going to watch the web site for problems. Most the time this is you.

If you don’t have time to watch your web site for problems, I’m one of the few that offer a compressive maintenance plan for web sites. I monitor the site everyday watching the site and error logs for any signs of trouble. To check out my maintenance plans go to my web site at www.DownHomeWebDesign.com.

What Problems Do I need To Watch For?

The most popular problem I find with web sites is a bad email address. The goal of your web site is normally to have customers contact you to purchase your product or service. The easiest way to do this is to send an email. I find it quite a paradox that the thing you need to work the best on a web site is the most commonly broken item.

The second most popular problem is broken contact forms. What makes this problem even worse is most of the time, there’s no sign it’s broken. Everything appears to work properly but the information just never gets delivered. These should be checked weekly or monthly to make sure they work.

The third most popular problem I find is related to the hosting provider. This isn’t reserved for the small hosting providers. I hear most complaints of problems with the big guys.

The most obvious hosting problem is that the web site is down and no one can access it. Other problems related to hosting I’ve seen is the web server displaying pages very slowly (this is different than a slow Internet connection) and pages with programs stop working.

It’s amazing how many times I’ve seen web pages with programs that display banner ads just stop working. Normally what happens is the hosting provider upgrades software on the server (without telling anyone) and the new software isn’t compatible with your program on your web page.

Some of the more minor problem are links to other web sites not working, copyright statement out of date, street address wrong, phone number wrong and dated material like schedules out of date.

How Do I Find These Problems?

The easiest way to find problems is by looking at the web site. Visit every page at least once a week. Look for pages or pictures that don’t display properly, links that don’t work, out of date information and slow loading pages. Make sure you click on every link on every page. Just because it works on one page, doesn’t mean it works on all of them.

If your web site is large, this can take a very long time. Here are a few short cuts you can use to find problems.

Where I find problems is by looking in the error log. Each time the web server can’t find a page or encounters an error, it’s recorded in the error log. The error log is a file that’s normally named “error_log”. Most people have never seen this file or are not interested in this file. If you feel adventurous the next time you upload files to your web site, check some of the other directories to see if you can find this file. It’s normally in a directory called logs.

Since some of you won’t be interested in the error log, another place to find errors is by looking at the statistics program for your web site. Often there’s an area for errors. I use Webalizer for statistics on my web sites. It has a section called “Hits by Response Code”.

There are different codes listed in this section. The most popular codes that indicate a problem are 400 (Bad Request) and 404 (File Not Found). If these codes appear, you need to take a closer look at your web site.

I didn’t cover every part of maintaining a web site. I hope I’ve covered enough so you can decide who’s going to maintain your site, you know what problems to look for and where you can find these problems. I’m sure many of you are too busy with your business to checkout your web site each week. If this is you, feel free to look over the maintenance plans I offer at www.DownHomeWebDesign.com.