Website Maintenance: What is it? Why do I need it?

Hello everyone, been a while since our last post and we are really sorry about that but none-the-less, we are back with more content and insightful articles for your reading pleasure.

Today we are going to be talking about a topic that seems to go under the radar of most site owners, usually only coming up when they run into one issue or another. Let’s break it down and show you what you need to know and what you can do concerning site maintenance.

So, you have built your very impressive site and it looks fantastic, loads fast and showcases all you want to your clientele and visitors. Congratulations, the easy part is done. Sadly, just having a website in today’s digital age is not enough. You have to be able to protect, optimize and update your content on a regular basis.

Protect, Optimize and Update

These are the fundamentals of any site maintenance scheme. Having these in mind and following some simple laid out steps, will enable you to have a healthy website for as long as you need it.

First off we have “Protect”

We have all heard the news about data breaches, security flaws being exploited and hackers taking over certain sites, making away with user sensitive information and in some extreme cases, taking down the whole website. To keep your site from falling victim to these types of attacks, you have to create a security protocol with steps for before, during and after such an incident.

Now before you start thinking that this might not apply to you, here are a few shocking stats. 90% of login attempts on retail sites are cyber attacks, 29% of your site “visitors” are there to attack your site. Not convinced? Let’s look at some evidence. Honeynet, an international non-profit security research organization, with assistance from students at Holberton School, set up a honeypot to track security attacks on a cloud-based web server. No domain name registered, no service running, just a blank server. Within 24hrs this server was attacked more than a quarter of a million times.

Knowing this, what can you do about it? Here are a few simple steps you have to take to be safe.

1. Only run services that you need. Whatever features your host or service provider has enabled on your site, make sure you are only run those you need.
2. Install updates as of when available, don’t wait. New software or script updates usually contain fixes to known security flaws.
3. Use services such as Cloudflare which allows you to filter the very worst of malicious
4. Get someone who knows website security to go over your site and create custom rules for you, or if you are more of a hands-on type, you can always learn to do this yourself. (You might not want to practice on your own site though).
5. Backup on a regular basis. Nothing hurt more than losing all your data. So make sure you have a running site backup.

With this, you should have a relatedly safe website. But don’t let your guard down. Always remain Vigilant.

Next on our list is “Optimization”

This refers to keeping your site running as smoothly as possible and giving you the best results possible. This ranges from search engine optimization (SEO), software script, database, and file optimizations.

• Search Engine Optimization enables your site to be found and indexed by the major online search engines, so as more content is placed on your site you have to make sure there are all optimized and indexed. Tags and keywords should be used and placed where needed with focus given to each page meta-data. This helps improve the quantity and quality of your site visitors.
• Script or Application Optimization: This involves streamlining the script on which your website runs, to deal with the dynamic changes of your online presence. For example. You might need to set up a cache to improve site load time for recurring visitors, simplify and optimize JavaScripts and CSS to enable faster first-time load speeds and many more.
• Database and File Optimization: Just as you would defragment and re-arrange your PC at home, your online database and files need to be straightened out and optimized from time to time to make sure the most used items are accessible faster and the travel time between file fragments is as little as possible.

Remember, the key here is “SPEED”. To borrow from a popular game franchise, your site has a need for speed, and to get this we need to optimize till everything works as smoothly and seamlessly as possible.

Now finally we have “Update”

This is different from your keeping your site scripts and software up-to-date as we discussed earlier. Here we are talking about your site content, the bread, and butter of your digital existence. No one is going to revisit a site that never changes. You have to keep your audience engaged, interact with them and give news and updates as of when due. This is most especially true for e-commerce sites. Content like promos, sales, giveaway, discounts, and coupons are just a few ways the site owner interacts with visitors, leaving a desire within them to come back and check for what new things they can benefit from. Even corporate sites have news and blog sections to keep their users and visitors up-to-date on various happenings related to their company.

At this point, most of you would have come to realize that having a website is more than just making a good looking design and placing it online. There is serious work to be done to make sure your site not only presents fantastic visuals but also remains effective and functional. So with some attention to details and simple practical steps, you can have a website that’s stood the trials on the digital age.