First of all, try to visit every page of the web site at least once a week and look for links that aren't working pictures or content that doesn't load properly and information that might be out of date. Out of date information can lower your SEO rankings, which you want to avoid. You can also look for errors by checking the error log, which makes a record of every time the web server comes across an error or cannot find a page. The error log can normally be found in the logs directory. You can also look at the statistics program for your web site to find errors. Two error codes to really pay attention to that may appear are 400 (Bad Request) and 404 (File Not Found).



Watch out for are bad email addresses or broken contact forms on the different pages of your web site. Since the goal of your web site is probably so that visiting customers can contact you in order to buy your product or services, you need to check weekly or monthly to make sure these work. Often there can be a problem with the hosting provider, such as the web site being down and no one is able to access it. Other hosting problems can be the web server displaying the web pages much too slowly or programs not working on pages. In addition, are the banner ads or links to other web sites working?

The overall structure of any web site is known as its architecture and how files relate to each other. It is essential to a large web site that every web page should have a link to the parent page, all the way back to the home page. The pages should be adequately linked together and partitioned into organized subdirectories. Home page content is vitally important to a large web site and should accurately represent what your company is all about to attract your customers and convince them to make a purchase. Is your contact information correct? Is your copyright date or other schedules still in force? Look at the design of the web site. Is the content font easy to read and skim through? Are the graphics well placed or do they obscure the company message in any way?

Unfortunately, there do not seem to be maintenance plans for web sites that are entirely comprehensive. Most plans found on the Internet provide only a solution to a problem or fix it rather than watch your web site and monitor it for any possible future problems. You will still need to be on top of the game to watch for them yourself, but with the right organizational system in place, this should not be too hard.