10 important things to check on your Web site at the New Year
Happy New Year to all!
I’ve been thinking about the things that we usually do at the beginning of each year for our clients so I thought I’d pass these items along to you. The very beginning of the year is a good trigger point to remember to do some very important web site maintenance. Here are the 10 most important things to do in the next couple of weeks:
1. Check for time-denominated content
Give your site the once-over looking for future-tense references to events that have now past. When a web site visitor reads “Register for our September 2008 Seminar” in January of 2009 they get the clear message that your organization isn’t paying attention to the details.
Pay particular attention to the “About Us’ page or functional equivalent page in your site. Make sure that duration denominated statements are also updated – for example “We’ve been serving Massachusetts residents for over 12 years” needs to be updated every year.
2. Review your contact information
Are the phone, fax, physical and mailing addresses listed on your site all current? You’re doing your constituents a disservice if they can’t reach you easily.
3. Check your organization’s staff listings Check to make sure the staff members you list are still employed and that their names are correct. Names can change occasionally due to marriages, divorces and legal name changes. Make sure the titles listed reflect the current position of each of your staff members.
4. Check all your email addresses
As with the previous item related to staff member listings, make sure email addresses are changed for name changes and for people no longer with the organization. People who have left should have their email redirected to the person who assumed their responsibilities. If you don’t have an inventory of email addresses for your organization make a quick one up in Microsoft Excel – and don’t forget email addresses that are not directly tied to individuals’ names…addresses like info@organization.org and postmaster@organization.org.
5. Check all staff password protected pages If you have content that is password protected for staff members use make sure that access has been cancelled for staff members that are no longer with the organization.
6. Review and test your site forms and interactivity We see web site scripts break all the time for a variety of reasons.
If you have any mission critical forms on your site, review them to make sure they work. Are the submissions being emailed completely or added to your database correctly? If the results are emailed make sure the email works and gets to the right person. While you are at it, make sure any automated email responses coming from the forms make sense, say the right things and create a complete experience for your constituents.
7. Update your copyright statements
This one always creates issues, particularly with web sites that use multiple servers or sub-domains, and especially for sites that have server script-based pages. Make sure the year is updated (for example “© 1998-2009 Organization Name”) and make sure to check pages created by server scripts since the copyrights may need to be updated in the scripts separately from the HTML content files.
8. Test all external links
Links that leave your site that are no longer valid make your site look unprofessional. External links can degrade in two ways: fist, the page that you linked to is no longer present on the target site and second, the page you linked to is present but now contains different information that is no longer relevant to your link. You should follow each external link by hand and make sure it is still relevant. Resist using automated link checkers to check your external links – they only insure a page is present at the other end of the link but can’t make sure the page’s content is still relevant.
9. Check your domain names
Check your domain at http://www.networksolutions.com/whois. In particular make sure the Administrative email address is current and working – that is where your registrar will send important renewal notices. If your organization has moved this year you should also update the mailing address associated with your domain.
Finally, check to be sure your domain is registered to your organization and not to your web development company or other third party. If you asked a vendor to register your domains for you they sometimes mistakenly register the domain in their name instead. While that’s fine while your relationship with that vendor is good, it can be a nightmare to fix the domain registration if the vendor relationship goes sour or the vendor goes out of business.
By the way, if you have more than one domain name registered for your organization you should add a worksheet to the Microsoft Excel inventory spreadsheet we mentioned in item #4 and record the domain name, the registrar, the registration date and the expiration date.
10. Backups
Make sure you have a current copy of your Web site files archived inside your organization. A local copy of your site will make recovering from a hosting catastrophe much less painful. Common hosting catastrophes include your hosting facility going out of business or a hacker guessing your FTP password and changing your site.
So that’s about it to kick off 2009.
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