Spring cleaning for your website
With the nicer weather comes the pressure to start doing small jobs, whether it's on your house by finally emptying the gutters, on your vehicle by finally changing the tires, and also on your website! In this blog post, we're going to look at updating your website. So you can head into the summer with fresh momentum.
Websites don't stand still in their life, there are constant updates to the website technology and the website itself, content is added in the form of blog posts, new pages or data. And sometimes an additional plug-in is installed or not removed at all. Also, things like moving a website or changing a theme are sometimes long on the to-do list. Spring, of course, is a time to do all of this step by step.
Do your to-do list step by step
Every webmaster has a to-do list, and if you don't have one, it is advisable to create one. With online tools like Trello or simply in a notebook, you can keep track of what needs to be done for your website. Do you need to update the PHP version, update a component or try out the new theme? With a to-do list, you can make your work easier, and last but not least, you can motivate yourself to get things done. With Trello, this is also satisfying, as you can also create a folder called Done. Here you can drag all your tasks to check off. You can also do this in the classic way on a whiteboard next to your desk. Then you'll always know what's left to do, and it'll be easier for you to stay on top of things.
With a spring cleaning of your website, you can resolve to work through your entire to-do list before the summer, or at least get the most important items done. This can often have a big impact on your website's performance. Think about activating and setting up an SSL certificate, publishing a new landing page, or updating a version. This way, you can start the next season with fresh vigor and not have to lug around an ever-growing to-do list.
Run a full website scan or check your sitemap.xml
It is also advisable to run a full site scan at regular intervals, which can be done in a number of ways. But examples include site scan using Ahrefs, SEMRUSH or other SEO tools. Besides the suitability for SEO or search engine optimization, there are also many points that are not directly related to it. For example, a forgotten page that needs to be completed again or a missing image. Such issues can affect your customers' user experience, which in turn can directly affect your performance in search engines.
A full scan will often give you a clear insight into the state of your website. Of course, you can do this without these tools by manually checking your sitemap.xml. But not only is this a lot of work, it's also not always accurate. For some reason, the URL of a website may not be specified in the sitemap.xml file. This can lead to problems. Keeping an eye on this regularly will contribute to the overall health of your website.
Check, archive or remove files
Even with websites, it's necessary to dive into the files every now and then. And know where certain things are. For example, if you have a lot of unused images or graphics, you should clean them up. The same goes for unused assets and database dirt like SPAM comments and plug-ins that have already been deleted. Of course, this is only something for advanced webmasters. If you don't know exactly what you are removing, it can cause your website to stop working or parts of it.
So always be careful when making changes and use your backups to restore some things. Your backups are also a good point to check during your spring cleaning. If you still have a large list of older and no longer relevant backups in your hosting area, you can clean them up as well. You can do this through the File Manager in the Control Panel or through a local FTP client like FileZilla.
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