Check and Double Check Your Website Functionality

We live in a world of ever-changing technology, and some of these changes can adversely impact your website. Here are some steps you can take to ensure your website continues to function correctly and stays accessible to clients and visitors.

New Browser Updates May Cause Problems

When Internet Explorer released version 7, some website navigation systems stopped working. Now would be a good time to make sure your website navigation is working correctly in IE 7 by either updating to that version or finding a computer that's using it. Check with friends or visit your local Circuit City or Best Buy to monitor your website on both PCs and Macs.

Web Host Security Upgrades May Cause Problems

Good web hosting companies update and install security upgrades to protect or enhance email performance. However, some of these upgrades may effect how your web forms work. A form script installed in your website in 2005 may not function with a web mail server upgrade installed in 2008.

Check your web forms. If you have one or more website forms, fill them out and click submit. Then check your email to see if you received the information. If not, contact your web host or web developer to trouble-shoot and correct the problem. It is critical that your web forms are working since this is one of your gateways to your electronic communication.

Check for Broken Links

Nothing will frustrate a visitor more than a broken link. Plus, this makes your website look bad. It tells your visitor you really don’t care or pay much attention to your website. Check your email links too.

If you have over 50 links to outside websites you may want to subscribe to a link checking service to detect changed or broken links. Working links are good for your search engine ranking. However, if a search engine robot is constantly detecting multiple broken links, developers agree this may affect your ranking.

About the Author
Rick Vidallon is President of Visionefx, a Web design company based in Virginia Beach, Va. They provide services to national companies as well as small to medium businesses throughout the United States.
Rick can be reached at (757) 619-6456 or rick@visionefx.net.