Website maintenance checklist: what to do every week, month, quarter and year

Why a checklist beats “I’ll look at it when something breaks”

Most websites don’t fail in one dramatic moment. They drift. A contact form stops sending, a price goes out of date, an old colleague still has access, the domain renewal card expires. Each problem is small, and each is found by a customer before it’s found by you.

A checklist fixes that by turning maintenance into a routine. It also makes the work easy to hand over, easy to price and easy to prove. If you look after sites for clients, a written checklist is the difference between “I keep an eye on it” and a service people understand.

The lists below are written for small business sites, portfolios and brochure sites: the kind most freelancers and small agencies look after. Larger shops and apps need more, but they need this too.

Weekly checks (10 minutes per site, or less)

The weekly pass is about noticing problems early. It shouldn’t take long.

• Open the live site on a phone and a computer. Does the home page load, and does it look right?
• Check what’s live against what you expect. Was last week’s change actually published, or is it still sitting on someone’s computer?
• Look for changes waiting. Any edit that’s finished but not published is work nobody can see.
• Read any messages the site sends you, such as form submissions, to confirm they’re still arriving.
• Scan for anything time-sensitive that has passed: an event date, a “this weekend only” offer, holiday opening hours.

If you look after several sites, do this from one list rather than opening each one from memory. In Devdwell, the dashboard shows every site as a card with its address, when it was last published and whether changes are waiting, so the weekly pass starts with one screen.

Monthly checks

Once a month, go a little deeper.

1. Test every form. Send a real message through the contact form, booking form or newsletter sign-up, and confirm it arrives where it should.
2. Click the main links and buttons. Navigation, calls to action, phone numbers and email links. A broken “Book now” button costs more than a broken footer link.
3. Check for broken links across the site. A free link checker will crawl a small site in a minute or two.
4. Update software, if the site runs on a platform with plugins, themes or a framework that needs updates. Do this on a staging copy first when you can.
5. Refresh dated content. Team members who have left, services you no longer offer, prices that have changed.
6. Look at the site’s search listing. Search for the business name and check the title and description that appear still make sense.
7. Note what you did. A one-line log per site makes the next month quicker and gives clients something to read.

Quarterly checks

Every three months, step back from the pages and look at the setup around them.

• Speed. Run the home page and one key page through a page speed test. Large images are the usual culprit; resize or compress them.
• Mobile. Go through the main pages on a phone, not just a narrow browser window. Check text size, tap targets and anything that scrolls sideways. Our guide to making a website mobile-friendly has a fuller list.
• Access. List everyone who can change or publish the site. Remove anyone who no longer needs it. This is the check people skip most, and it’s the one that matters most when a relationship ends.
• Copies of the site. Confirm you have an up-to-date copy of the files somewhere other than the hosting account, and that you know how to restore it. See how to back up a website.
• Security basics. The site should load over https with no warnings. Passwords for hosting and domain accounts should be unique and protected with two-step sign-in.
• Analytics and search tools. If you use them, check they’re still collecting data and nothing has dropped sharply.

Yearly checks

Once a year, look at the things with long cycles and big consequences.

1. Domain renewal. Check the expiry date, turn on auto-renew, and make sure the payment card and contact email on the account are current. An expired domain takes the whole site and its email down.
2. Hosting and other subscriptions. Confirm what you pay for, what renews when, and whether you still need it.
3. Legal and policy pages. Privacy policy, cookie notice, terms, company details in the footer. Laws and the business both change.
4. The footer year and other small tells. A copyright year from three years ago makes a site look abandoned.
5. A content review. Read every page as a new customer would. Is it still true? Is anything missing that people keep asking about?
6. A fitness check. Does the site still do what the business needs? If the answer is “not really”, start planning, and use our website redesign checklist when you do.

A one-page version you can copy

Weekly:

• Live site loads and looks right on phone and computer.
• Last change is published; nothing is waiting.
• Form messages still arriving.
• Nothing time-sensitive has expired.

Monthly:

• Every form tested end to end.
• Main links, buttons, phone and email links work.
• Broken link scan done.
• Software updated (on staging first).
• Dated content refreshed.
• Log updated.

Quarterly:

• Speed checked; large images fixed.
• Main pages checked on a real phone.
• Access list reviewed; old access removed.
• Copy of the site confirmed and restorable.
• https working; account passwords and two-step sign-in in place.

Yearly:

• Domain renewal date, auto-renew and payment details checked.
• Subscriptions reviewed.
• Legal pages and footer details updated.
• Every page read through.
• Decision made on whether the site needs a bigger update.

Making maintenance stick

The checklist only works if it happens. A few habits help:

• Put it in the calendar. A recurring Monday slot for weekly checks and a first-of-the-month slot for monthly ones.
• Keep every site on one list. If you have to remember which sites exist, some will be forgotten. Our article on managing multiple websites covers how to set that list up.
• Use the same routine for every change. Make the change, check it on a staging copy if anyone else needs to see it, then publish. The same steps on every site means fewer surprises.
• Give access per site. When a client or helper only has access to the one site they work on, the quarterly access check takes seconds.

How Devdwell helps

Devdwell doesn’t monitor uptime or run backups for you, so you’ll still want your own tools for those. What it does is keep the routine parts of the list in one place: every site on one screen with its live status and whether changes are waiting, one button to publish to a private staging link or the live address, and access given per site by email. Every saved change keeps its history and is synced between your computers, so the “what changed and when” part of your log is already there.

Questions