Yes, it's that time of year again--time to make sure the administrative and maintenance aspects of your site are in order as we head into 2003. To that end, I offer you POP's Annual Website Maintenance Checklist:
1. Update Your Copyright:
Out-of-date copyright's can inadvertently send the message that your site's content is old. As part of your year-end site review, check your copyright dates for accuracy. The syntax for a copyright notice is as follows:
Copyright (c) (first date of creation) (owner).
Examples: Copyright (c) 2002 POP Interactive, Inc.
Copyright (c) 2001, 2002 POP Interactive, Inc.
2. Check Your Email Addresses:
Create a list of all the email addresses that appear on your site and confirm that they are all still active. You'd be surprised how many email addresses can change in a year--and how updating them can be missed during routine maintenance.
3. Validate Your Links:
This should actually be done on an ongoing rather than annual basis. However, it's an item that sometimes gets overlooked during routine maintenance so it's a good idea to include in your annual review.
If you need a standalone utility to help validate your links, you might try one of these:
4. Update Time References on Your Site:
Company, management and staff profiles often include time period references such as "for five years". The end of the year is a perfect time to update this information.
Also, if your site includes a historical timeline or accomplishments, now is also a good time to add 2002 highlights to the list.
5. Check Your File Sizes and Download Times:
A lot of attention is usually paid to file sizes and download times when a site is initially developed. However, as various updates are made during the course of a year files sizes can start to increase. Spending time re-optizing your pages will pay off by improving your site's performance and user-friendliness. At a minimum, I suggest re-optimizing your Home and key pages as part of your annual review.
6. Test Your Forms:
Running tests of your website forms to make sure they continue to function correctly is an easy and important part of an annual review.
7. Check Your Keyword Search:
Performing an in-depth test of your site's search feature should definitely be part of your annual review. You want to make sure your search is functioning effectively, that new content is showing up and that outdated content is not.
If your indexing criteria has not been updated as new content has been added, some of it may not be showing up in your search results. Also, if outdated pages have been left on the server, they may continue to be included in your results--even if there are no links to them.
If you don't have a search feature on your site, use the annual review to revisit the subject and see if it might be time to add one.
8. Review Your Domain Record:
Contact and email information on your domain record should be checked once a year. If your information is incorrect you may not receive renewals and other important notices.
Domain Record Lookup:
9. Test Your Cross-Browser Compatibility:
This year IE 6 was released, as was Netscape 7 and AOL 8. Check your website statistics to identify which browsers your visitors are using, and use that information to determine how much effort to invest in making your site compatible with each.
Browser Downloads:
- IE 6
[http://www.microsoft.com/ie/]
- Netscape 7
[http://channels.netscape.com/ns/browsers/download.jsp]
- AOL 8
[http://free.aol.com/tryaolfree/]
10. Perform a Content Audit:
If you're more ambitious, I recommend conducting a full content audit on an annual basis in addition to checking the few specific areas of content listed above.
A content audit allows you to take a big picture look at your site. It will help you identify content that should be added, removed, updated or edited. In addition, it can help you identify areas of your site that may need content management or better tools to streamline the maintenance process.