Website maintenance best practices

CMS User Group MeetingOctober 21, 2015

Why maintenance?• You spent a lot of time and effort building your

website, you don’t want to let it languish• Your website is a powerful tool to communicate with

your audience• It’s not that hard (with a little bit of planning)

What does maintenance involve?• Checking and fixing broken links• Reviewing and pruning content• Refreshing your entire website

Broken links are bad• They damage your reputation• They frustrate users• They negatively affect search rankings• You’re pissing off other web folks

Broken link checkup

• Nobody likes fixing broken links• If you budget a little time each week, it’s not so bad

(promise)• Blink has over 3800 pages-Dan spends about 2-3

hours/week fixing links

CWS, I’m motivated to fix broken links! Now what do I do?

1. Check publish messages2. Check individual pages for broken links3. Use the CMS broken link report4. Run Xenu or Integrity5. Ask us for help!

1. Check your publishing messages• After publishing go to the dashboard and check

publishing messages:

Message detail

Scroll down to the good stuff

• Why is this broken?

2. Check individual pages for broken links• Finds links on the Add-One & Tools page:– http://cws.ucsd.edu/support/documentation/working/cms

-features/add-ons.html

• Download Link Checker Firefox Plugin or Check My Links Chrome Plugin

• Check for broken links after you publish• Manually check critical/high traffic pages periodically

3. Use the CMS broken link report

• You must be a site manager to view the report • Edit pages directly from report• Note: it’s a little limited-no way to exclude links

CWS needs to eat our own dogfood

4. Run Xenu or Integrity• Finds links on the Add-One & Tools page:– http://cws.ucsd.edu/support/documentation/working/cms

-features/add-ons.html

• Download Xenu (PCs) or Integrity (Macs)• Run the report• Watch the magic happen

5. Seriously, what do we have to do?• Run broken link checker for you• Send you the report• Public shaming? • Kudos from us?

Serhiy is your new best friend

Here’s the meat

What about redirects?• Um, what is a redirect?

– Wikipedia: URL redirection, also called URL forwarding, is a World Wide Web technique for making a web page available under more than one URL address. When a web browser attempts to open a URL that has been redirected, a page with a different URL is opened.

• Redirects can be at the server level or via an .htaccess file

.htaccess examples

• Redirect /student-life/_organizations/student-conduct/ http://students.ucsd.edu/sponsor/student-conduct/

• Redirect /academics/classes-enrollment/undergraduate-enrollment/checklist.html http://students.ucsd.edu/academics/enroll/undergraduate-enrollment/checklist.html

• Redirect /academics/enroll/graduate-enrollment/enrollment-checklist.html http://students.ucsd.edu/academics/enroll/graduate-enrollment/checklist.html

Why you can’t rely on redirects• Temporary fix at best• A redirect of a redirect of a redirect will eventually

break• Not good for performance• Messes up search rankings

What to do about it?

• Link checkers will show you redirects• You should fix them• If you don’t, you REALLY should check for broken links

often• If you don’t have time to check your entire site, check

most important pages

Content review is important

• Your website needs pruning• Less really IS more• Users will visit your site more if you change it often

Your website is kinda like your closet

• Shouldn’t it look nice and tidy?

My ideal closet

• I like shoes

My actual closet

• Still like shoes

Is this sexist?

Number of shoes per team member:

• Allisa – 45• Alex - 5• Chris – 6• Cristian – 10• Dan - 5• Jessica – 13• Jeremy – 30-40

Even nerds can get behind this

The most important rule

• If you put something on the website, take something down

CMS review feature

Schedule a review date

Annoy your co-workers

Don’t forget about images and files• Images get old, too:

Review your downloadable files• Is this form still current?

Editorial calendar• Want to keep your home page fresh? Set up an editorial

calendar• Add recurring events, programs, news items• Use a Google/shared calendar or another collaborative tool

(SharePoint, OneDrive, Google doc)

Editorial calendar sample

Site refresh• Go bug Chris

Questions?