Maintenance tools for webmasters

Regular website maintenance is essential to keep your website credible. Use the tools on this page to give your site a tune-up

The Web Credibility Project discovered that site maintenance and good design are essential for a visitor's faith in a website's content, based on a survey of 1649 web users in the year 2002.

"If websites were cars, it would be the trusty Toyota and not the flashy Ferrari that would win the web credibility race," says BJ Fogg who runs the Persuasive Technology Lab of which the Web Credibility Project is a part. "Sites lose credibility when they are not updated, when links are broken, or when the site is down unexpectedly," he says. "Our study didn't ask why this is so, but it seems reasonable that having outdated content or broken links reflects a lack of expertise or concern by the website operator. This negative impression likely generalises to the entire site, including the credibility of the content."

The research might be dated now, but the premise is still true. Use the tools on this page to maintain your site.

All round checkers

• Watson - free page checkers including HTML validation, spelling, link popularity, estimated download speeds and link checking.

Link checkers

• Linkalarm - checks the links on websites for a cent per page (not per link). Very user-friendly format.
• Free W3C Linkchecker - claims to search up to 150 linked documents on a site and is particularly useful for single page validations. It can take a long time for the check to finish, and the results rolling down the page aren't very easy to process.
• Linkchecker Lite - desktop freeware to check up to 1000 links. The presentation is good, but the downside of using desktop software is that each link test goes through your web connection, making it impractical to test large sites on anything but a broadband connection.
• Quickcheck - Free online link checking and HTML validation service for up to 10 web pages an hour or up to 50 pages a day (200 links per document limit).
• Link Quality - publishes its survey of how many links are broken across different sectors of websites
• Link visibility checker - check how many incoming links your site has, according to different search engines

Speed optimisation

• GIFBot - Netmechanic's free online GIF and JPEG optimiser
• Web Page Analyzer
• (article on optimising your website for speed)

Code validation

• W3C HTML validator
• W3C CSS validator

Cross-browser compatibility

• Anybrowser site validator - Anybrowser has its own specification, which it claims reflects the largest installed base of browsers. It's HTML 3.2 with additions to allow background colours in tables and font colours.
• Lynx Viewer - shows you any obvious omissions when your page is rendered as plain text

Various other tools

• Template Monster - Buy new logos and website templates to freshen your design
• Adobe PDF Maker - Create a PDF online at Adobe's website (limited free trial)
• Link popularity checker - how many sites link to you?
• Internetseer - get a free email report when your website goes down. Sites checked hourly.
• Trendeasy - another free hourly web availability monitor
• Netcraft - find out what software your server is running. Search for security news relating to that software to make sure you're running the latest patches to defend your site against hackers.
• Websafe colour palette - ensure your webpage's main colours will render accurately between different browsers and platforms by using the colours in this palette