GIVE YOUR WEBSITE A HEALTH CHECK

Is your company’s web presence letting you down? Nik Rawlinson sets out the points to check and updates to look out for

- Nik Rawlinson

Websites get stale. What once made them fresh and interesting becomes old and familiar and they can also become insecure if you don't keep them fully patched. For a business, that can have reputational and financial implications. It's no wonder many small- and medium-sized companies farm out the job of looking after their online presence entirely.

But this doesn't mean you can forget about the problem. Any issues with your website ultimately reflect on your business, not your provider. The difficult part is knowing what you should be looking for, what matters and what can be left alone. Here's our checklist of vital checks and updates you should be carrying out - perhaps with the help of your developer, whether they're in-house or remote - to ensure that your online presence meets modern expectations and creates the right impression.

Update your software stack

A web server relies on multiple technologies to deliver your pages, including PHP, Python, MySQL, a CMS and the underlying operating system. The OS may well be managed by your hosting provider, but you can often update and configure components such as PHP and MySQL yourself, to your own schedule.

In fact, you often have to. When you first set up your web presence, the host will usually provide the latest fully secured version of each package - but in order to ensure that nothing interferes with whatever software you've installed on top, they won't automatically install any subsequent updates. This can mean your website becomes insecure and unless you regularly log in to the control panel (or the host sends you a warning) you might not realise before it's too late. It's a good idea to periodically check which versions of the key web technologies you're using and ensure they're still secure and supported. Here's the current state of play.

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