Everybody Clean Up: Weekly Website Scour
Let’s add another few things to your never-ending to-do list, author. Here are a few things you can (and should) do every week to maintain your website health.
File Backup: Make sure to maintain a current backup of your website JUST IN CASE. Not saying everything is going to crash and burn, but what if it did? When was your last backup? If you can’t remember off the top of your head, then it’s definitely time to download a fresh one. There are several plugins available that will automatically do this for you, or you can go into your website settings and manually download a copy.
Check For Errors: 404s are instant death in the world of the internet. No one wants to see a 404 or have one associated with their website. How embarrassing. A quick cursory link check will let you know if you have any issues. Be sure to do a more in-depth check every month as well.
Contact Page/Forms: Make sure your information is correct. Submit an inquiry and see 1) if it works and 2) how fast it ends up in your inbox. You don’t want to miss out on any potential leads and future endeavors if your contact form is broken!
Reply To Comments: If you have a blog or a newsletter (which I highly recommend), every week you should reply to comments and delete any spam or trolls. If subscribers and fans are submitting comments without getting a reply, they may not be as engaged in the future. Even just a quick “Thank you for your comment! I appreciate your support.” can do wonders.
Social Media: If you share content regularly from social media to your website or vice versa, make sure things are uploading correctly. You don’t want to have a lot of content scheduled and find out in a month or two that none of it shared properly. What a headache that would be.
I realize I am just adding more things to your to-do list, author. But trust me, taking care of the small things now will mean you have less to do during big checkups. Think of it like tackling small cleaning jobs a few times rather than having to clean the whole house in one go.
