Websites rarely fail loudly. A form stops sending email, a certificate expires, a plugin goes a year without an update, and the first person to find out is a customer. A short routine, run on the same day every month, catches most of this while it is still cheap to fix.
The routine below fits in twenty minutes because it only looks. Fixing comes later. That one rule is what makes it repeatable.
Before the first run
Prepare three things once:
- A log. A spreadsheet or a note with one row for each month and a column for each check. Date, who ran it, result, follow-ups.
- Your logins. Domain registrar, hosting, the site's admin area, analytics, and the mailbox that receives form enquiries. If you cannot find one of them, that is your first finding.
- A calendar slot. A recurring event, such as the first Monday. A routine that depends on remembering does not survive a busy month.
The checks, with a time budget
Times are guides. The total is the limit.
1. Look at the site as a visitor (2 minutes). Open the home page and your two or three most important pages on a phone and on a computer, in a private window so you are not logged in. Check that they load, that nothing is obviously broken, and that the main button works.
2. Links (3 minutes). Run your key pages through the W3C Link Checker, which reports broken links, anchors and referenced objects on a page and can follow links recursively. Then click your phone number, email link and main buttons by hand, since a checker cannot judge whether the destination is the right one.
3. Forms (3 minutes). Send a test enquiry through every form. Confirm it reaches the right inbox, check the spam folder too, and see whether any automatic reply arrives. A confirmation message on the page only shows that the page accepted the form, not that anyone received it.
4. Backups (2 minutes). Open the place where backups are kept and read the date of the newest one. It should be as recent as your plan says. You are checking that backups are running, not restoring them. A restore test belongs on a quarterly or twice-yearly schedule.
5. Renewals (2 minutes). Note the expiry dates of the domain, hosting, and any paid tools the site depends on, and check that the payment card on each has not expired. Registrars send expiry notices, but a notice sent to an old email address helps no one, so confirm the contact address on the account is current. If your certificate comes from a free automated authority such as Let's Encrypt, certificates last 90 days and are meant to renew roughly every 60. A certificate close to expiry in the browser's details may mean the automatic renewal has stopped working.
6. Analytics (2 minutes). If you use analytics, open a real-time or live view, load your own site in another tab, and confirm your visit appears. Google's Analytics help describes its Realtime report, which covers the last 30 minutes, as a way to verify that measurement code is working. Then glance at last month. A sudden fall to zero means the tracking broke, not that everyone left.
7. Updates (3 minutes). Look at the pending updates for your site software, themes and plugins. Do not apply them in this window. WordPress's own documentation advises backing up before updating, and an update is a change to a live site. Note what is waiting, check the backup is current, then book a time to apply them.
8. Content (2 minutes). Read the page that gets the most calls. Do opening hours, prices, addresses and any seasonal banner still match reality?
That adds up to 19 minutes. Use the last one to write the log entry.
The stop condition
Stop when either of these happens first:
- Every check has a result in the log, or
- The twenty minutes are up.
If time runs out, write "not checked" beside the remaining items and start with them next month. Do not extend the session. A check that quietly grows into an afternoon is one you will skip next month.
Two exceptions apply. If the site is down, or a form is losing enquiries, stop the routine and handle that as the problem it is. And do not fix things during the check. A fix needs a note with an owner and a date, for example "Contact form not delivering, owner: site builder, by Friday." Fixing in the moment makes the check unpredictable, and a rushed fix can break something else.
A fictional example
A fictional bookshop runs the check on the first Monday of November.
- Pages load. The map on the contact page is blank on a phone. Logged for the builder.
- The link checker finds two broken links on an old events page. Logged.
- The test enquiry arrives, but in spam. Logged as urgent.
- Newest backup is 5 days old. Fine.
- Domain renews in 40 days. The card on file expires first. Logged for the owner.
- Live analytics shows the visit. Fine.
- Four plugin updates are waiting. Booked for Thursday after a backup.
- The Christmas opening hours are still last year's. Logged.
Six follow-ups, none done during the check, nineteen minutes spent.
Quarterly additions
Every three months, add a restore test of a backup, a review of who has admin access to the site and domain, and a read-through of every page for facts that have gone stale. Keep these out of the monthly slot, or the twenty minutes will not hold.
Sources
Prepared with AI assistance. Examples are fictional unless stated.