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Ah ... I've been having such fun for the last 90 minutes ... I've been tracking down and removing broken links on one of our major blogs. It's such high-adrenalin fun! NOT!

Now I can understand that there will always be broken links because websites come and go and people who start with such high hopes can fail. When they do both they and their websites disappear from the Net forever. So you can expect some links to break over time but then I started finding links that should never have been broken ... I began finding broken links from sites that are still online and are run by people who claim to be SEO experts.

These links weren't broken just because of a server hiccup ... they were broken because the person who runs the site had simply removed the pages. They had been taken down and no form of redirection had been put in place. It's a fundamental mistake that shows how inexpert these people really are.

It's like the webmasters who think that just because their host offers daily, weekly or whatever backups it's ok not to do any backups themselves. Steve and I were talking to a guy yesterday who was sure that his host did regular backups on his site but didn't know where the backups were stored.

The chances are that his host backs those all important files up on the same server hard drive that the site is kept on. Now, even if you're only new to the business and haven't built many sites, if you stop and think about it then you will see the problem there. When the hard drive fails - and hard drives do fail ... and your sites disappear in a puff of smoke then your backups disappear too.

So make sure that you do your own backups on a very regular basis and you do them back to your own computer. Sure it can be a pain backing those sites up every week but if you don't do backups and your server hard drive fails then you're facing a nightmare situation that is not going to end well.

And doing those backups has become even more important in these days of content management systems that run on your server. Content management systems can be great because you can build your sites and add pages on the fly. It's all done so easily with just a few clicks of your mouse but once again, if you don't back those content management systems up away from the server what happens when the server crashes?

We definitely do use those one-click installation options offered by hosts when we're setting up a site that is going to be run by a content management system but once it's set up we then download everything to one of our office machines.

Yes it can take a long time ... even on a high-speed DSL connection ... and yes, it's boring to have to go back every now and then to check to see that it's all happening but it's also a cheap insurance policy against those nightmare-situations that seem to happen at the worst possible times. So do make sure that you backup your sites, not just your databases ... keep a mirror image of your server right there on your home or office computer if you're really serious about surviving in this industry.

And while you're doing your backups be sure to check all the links on your website on a regular basis too. Steve and I run Xenu on a regular basis and it does a very good job at finding all those links that people have removed or redirected without telling you.

Of course once you run it and see what can be a list longer than your arm of links that need attention then you really do have to act on it. Too many dead links and the search engines start to consider your site to be one that they should not recommend to searchers who might be looking for what you're selling and that's the last thing you need when you're trying to achieve a good ranking in the search engine results pages.

Website designs
One of the hassles of being a website designer in mainstream ... or even building websites here in adult ... is that sooner or later you start to run out of ideas when it comes to designing something different for your next client or your next site. That's when we need to start looking for inspiration ... not something to copy but something to give our imagination a little kick to get started again.

Following another person's recommendation about places to get inspiration I went to Flickr yesterday and typed 'web designs' into the search box. Try it and see what appears for you.

Not only will you find the portfolios of some very talented designers but you should also turn up a number of groups that are collecting examples of exciting and innovative designs. If you need some inspiration Flickr is definitely the place to get it.

And now I'm off to a morning of meetings and an afternoon of some solid work. I hope you have a great day ... doing some backups.