maintenanceMaintenance is what separates the great web sites from the rest of the herd. A well maintained web has a program, or a person, which checks its links to make sure that they still work. If a site has moved, or a file name has changed, all of the links to it must be updated.
Many times, when a site becomes popular, it must be moved to another computer, because its original home cannot handle the network traffic that its popularity has brought it. When Yahoo , the popular web index, moved from a departmental machine at Stanford University, to one sponsored by Netscape, they advertised their impending move for several weeks. After the move had been made, it was still possible to connect to the old site, which announced the new address and allowed users to link to the new site. This type of planning is also a kind of maintenance.
One of the excuses for poor maintenance that one frequently sees is an icon that announces that a web site is under construction. This frequently means that there are links listed that don't yet connect to anything. Imagine opening a book to find that its inviting chapter headings are all a sham, once a page is turned, one finds only empty space, or a message that informs you that the site is under construction. The savvy web maintainer realizes that a well designed page with a few good links to information is more appealing than a page which promises large amounts of information that aren't there yet.