Websites have become as second nature to the average user as TV, radio, and newspapers once were. People expect websites to be up and running all of the time, and web servers are designed to stay on all of the time. But that does not always happen. Sometimes even major sites go down when least expected. Nevertheless, most hope to achieve 99% uptime or something close to it. To attain that goal, you need to consciously work at making your website reliable.

The goal is to have a website that is scalable and can meet the demands of increased traffic over time. It should also be reliable, able to withstand stress while also fending off rogue attempts to undermine its integrity. Amix has a list of 3 things you should definitely do to keep your site working reliably.

1. Monitor everything – Monitoring does not mean simply looking at a few graphs or charts at the end of the month to see how many ad clicks you received. You need to monitor your site’s actual performance, its daily traffic, error logs, and the types of visitors who frequent it.
2. Be proactive – Being a reactionary when it comes to web hosting can be recipe for disaster. Keep backups of all of your data. If you can afford it, it may even be a good idea to have some type of redundancy in place, especially if your site is coming close to maxing out its server power. Before you run into problems, you should already have your site optimized for peak performance with load balancing and other advanced management techniques already in motion.
3. Be prepared – In the event that something actually does go wrong with your site, you need to be notified right away and also have a plan in place to quickly mitigate the problem. There are many web services that offer email and/or text SMS notifications whenever one of your web services goes down.

Be prepared, monitor everything, and stay alert. Your website requires maintenance, protection, and disaster preparedness just like any other major property you own. With the right tools in place, you can have a reliable website that your users will depend on for its service.