by Firefly Partners • 06.10.2016
You’ve got the usual list of suspects at your organization: the online engagement tool, a blog, social media platforms, and a website. That’s a lot to manage. Out of all of these tools, your website is getting the most visibility. After all, it’s the foundation for the rest of these tools and gets the most traffic (generally speaking), so it’s gotta be good.
A website is a bit like a car. You need to put in periodic maintenance to make sure it works well and doesn’t break down. Here at Firefly Partners we do a lot of work on websites to keep them functioning correctly and looking good. And we’re always on the lookout for new tools to help us keep websites in tip-top shape- whether it’s for a scheduled tune-up or major maintenance. Here’s a roundup of a few resources to help your website:
Running Like a Well-Oiled Machine: For Tune Ups
- Down for Everyone, or Just Me?
Is your website down, or is the router acting up again? This website will tell you just that.
- The Internet Archive Way Back Machine
Trying to remember what your website had on the home page four years ago? Hop over to the Internet Archive to see! You can also take snapshots of pages on your website here and they’ll be saved at the moment in time for the sake of Internet posterity. Note: this isn’t intended to replace a comprehensive backup solution.
- W3C Link Validator
Don’t have time to click through hundreds of links on your site to see if they still work? Neither do we! Use the W3C Link Validator to scan your site for broken links so you know what to fix.Pro Tip #1: Check Summary Only to make your results easier to read.
Pro Tip #2: if you’d like to scan more than one page at a time, set a number in the field “Check linked documents recursively, recursion depth.” For example, if you put 1, it will follow every link it checks on the page, and then check every link on those pages. As you might imagine, this will take much longer than using the summary validator.If you’re on Drupal or WordPress (and most of you are), there might be a more direct solution: Try Broken Link Checker for WordPress and Link Checker for Drupal.
- Am I Responsive
Not sure your website is responsive? Take a look here and see the design adapts on different screen sizes. Do you already know that your site is responsive, but you’re not sure how a particular post or page is looking? Use this to get a quick impression. It’s always best to test on live devices, but this site is a great starting point before your starting conscripting your co-workers’ phones.
- Kraken.io
Want to make your website faster? A good place to start is with images, which account for more than half of the average web page size. Before you upload an image to your website, run in through Kraken to reduce the file size. This will help you website load more quickly.
Getting Under the Hood: For Major Maintenance
- Google Webmaster Toolkit *Requires Google Account
Google Webmaster Tools is a website health and optimization tool. Once you sign up and prove that you own the site, Google Webmaster Tools will scan your site for potential problems as well as areas that can be improved. These helpful tools range from checking for malware, listing sites that link to your site, providing insight into how your site looks to Google’s search engine, and much more.
- Email on Acid and Litmus
Do you manage a lot of newsletters? Find out how they look on different email clients by using Email on Acid or Litmus. Designing emails can be very tricky, and slight changes can look a lot different depending on hat email client or service is being used. These services generate screenshots of your test emails so you can be sure before hitting send. Both services have monthly subscription fees, but you can sign up for a free trial to see how they work.
Yes friends, Firefly Partners can be the webmaster for your websites as part of our in-demand Technical Support packages We’ll keep your CMS software up to date, troubleshoot things that aren’t working, and add new features. Want more? We got more – our developers can update plugins, maintain backups, and improve performance. Whether you’re looking to simply keep your website secure and functional, or you’re looking to build some new features on your site or set up some optimization tools, Firefly Support Services are great way to go. Get in touch!
