Website management - Don't get wrapped up in the everyday toil

Allowing your non-IT staff to update and maintain your website is the best way of keeping it relevant and exciting.

Planning and launching a website are only the first fledgling stepshe best way of keeping it relevant and exciting. in any site's existence. After it has been set up, like a parent letting go of a child, the IT manager has to focus on other projects and needs to be able to leave daily management to others.

Although daily management of a website can be outsourced to a specialist third-party, it is cheaper and more effective if a site can be maintained by non-technical staff - even those who would usually be scared of HTML.

A simple way to do this, said Mark Desvaux, partner development manager at UUNet, is to create a website with pages that users can alter and then re-submit.

"As well as reducing website management costs, it empowers individuals.

That, in turn, has a beneficial effect on morale and increases the chances that the sites will remain up-to-date and relevant," said Desvaux. He also strongly recommended that updated pages are sent to a marketing department before they are actually posted. "You need some kind of control otherwise the website could develop into an uncontrollable beast," he acknowledged.

The website management learning curve should be as short and sweet as possible, according to Dave Walsh, European solutions engineer with NetObjects.

Walsh said that people can easily be given tools to enable them to update the areas of the site that are relevant to their job. "This not only reduces the web team's workload, but you'll find that if people are contributing their own work to the website they will take greater pride in the site generally," he explained.

However, Walsh also pointed out that control is necessary. "Although I advocate as much delegation as possible - to avoid bogging down the IT department with mundane editing tasks - you can't have everyone adding their bit. Equally, you don't want the opposite situation, a kind of Chinese whispers effect, where people pass on their ideas to the few who are allowed to manage and edit the site," he said.

Chris Hibbert, sales and marketing director of MSG Business Systems - which distributes the DataFlex WebApp Server tool for building and deploying database applications within websites - said that templates can be used to keep 'creativity' within bounds.

Maintaining control

"We would recommend a website-management system that understands multiple people are involved with input and maintenance," Hibbert said. "It should enable write-access only to those parts of the site that are appropriate, on a log-in basis."

It is also important to set review milestones and standards, to ensure the website retains consistency and continuity. "Every page should have an owner and anyone who creates a page should somehow be coerced into reviewing that page at regular intervals for continued relevance," said Hibbert. "It should be possible to create something akin to a sales-lead tracking system, which moves people on to the next action, on a page-by-age basis. Otherwise the sites will get terribly cluttered and risibly out of date."

In many cases, added Hibbert, there is an even better way of managing ongoing website development. It is possible to employ a front-end tool to control the entry of content. This can be used in conjunction with data and application management tools, which will remember and publish changed records, react to the browser-originated requests for data, and maintain 'sell by' dates on the information held in the database. "This offers a good alternative to project-based creation and management and is more sophisticated than basic template control of layout," he said, adding that even a simple front-end can contain intelligence that monitors the data being entered.

Directing the flow of work

Guy Redwood, technical director of media design agency FLG21, said that it is necessary to create some workflow systems around the website. "A content provider, such as a PR person, would log into the site, add a press release, and the content manager for the press release area, such as a marketing manager, would receive an e-mail saying that there is a new press release awaiting sign-off for posting," he explained. "The content manager would log into the site and click a check box to approve or amend the press release and then make it live." More advanced systems would allow the content manager to control the time at which the new content was posted to the site.

Redwood also recommended that simple Word files be used for document creation and distribution, and access to HTML authoring tools be restricted.

"'HTML is not foolproof, even if you know what you are doing," he pointed out. "But if you encourage people to use the structure set out in your template, the correct coding is guaranteed." It also means that the content provider focuses on delivering the copy and content, not on fiddling with flashing logos or "improving" the site's design.

Website management can also be made easier for non-technical staff if the interrelationship between the pages and links is visualised in the form of a diagram. Guy Tweedale, European product marketing manager at Visio International, said such diagrams can easily be generated using a software package like Visio Professional. "Shapes or drawings can easily be linked to other pages or documents and published on websites, as well as being used to give the non-techie a visual key as to how pages are linked and who does what," he said.

There are three things the IT manager should remember, according to Paul Barker, associate director at CMG's advanced technology division. These are: to maintain a common look and feel with all web pages and also with other software throughout the organisation; to encourage users to respond quickly to changes in information by making relevant changes to the website on a frequent and regular basis; and to make navigation through the site easy for non-techie users.

"If the content is easy to update, yet controlled, and if the users feel that they are making an important, personal contribution to the efficiency and competitiveness of the organisation, and all this happens without it being stifled by bureaucracy, the website is going to be popular internally and therefore successful externally," said Barker.

CONSTANTLY UPDATING IS THE NAME OF REUTERS' WEB GAME

Steve Dale, IT manager at Reuters, explained that the company has to integrate content from four different information groups, which are geographically dispersed.

"We use Mediasurface, which allows us to concentrate on getting the information out and overcomes the problems of managing and updating our website, extranet and intranet," said Dale. "We even have different groups adding information to the same page, with control and management over each part of the page.

Potentially, we are able to scale up to working with contributors in 20 or 30 locations and to build a new website without increasing the headcount in our IT department."

TOP TRICKS FOR DAILY MANAGEMENT OF A WEBSITE

The IT manager or net engineer should:

- Delegate as much as possible to users - don't take on all the responsibility for keeping the site updated.

- Keep users away from authoring pages in HTML.

- Create a workflow system that has loops for reviewing fresh content before it is posted.

- Have built-in reminders to update old content.

- Keep staff informed of their power to amend 'their' website. Explain how they can post copy and amendments.

- Find a system that supports the flexibility and adaptability demanded by the regular updating.

- Be driven by the business objectives - don't try and mould the business objectives to the limitations of the site.

- Users should be able to update and manage the site using the same interface that they use for everything else.

- Make sure that employees' maintenance of their corner of the website is included in their job descriptions and features in job performance assessments, so that they are motivated to do it and do it well.

STARTING OFF WITH A LONG-TERM WEBSITE STRATEGY

It is crucial to create a long-term strategy for maintaining a website, and the best people to do this are employees across the whole company, not just members of the IT department.

Jane Harrad Roberts, consultant director of Marketing Projects, said: "Having a website that maintains or improves on its design and content as time goes on requires excellent communication throughout the organisation. All the departments need to develop a tight brief on their responsibility for updating and maintaining the site, and there need to be automatic triggers or reminders built into the system to make sure that all corners of the site are refreshed regularly." This is important, she said, otherwise the site will have a negative effect on morale and the company's bottom line. "The brief should focus on targeting and responding to site visitors in the way that they expect," she said. "Information has to be timely, and this is where so many websites let themselves and those who designed them down." They are great for a couple of weeks, said Harrad Roberts, but if the sites are updated then the technology and the visitors move on.

"Web designers must think of how to future-proof their sites at the time they are creating them, and allow access for regular updates from the 'right' people. This is easy to do with passwords and forms formatting," said Harrad Roberts. "Then the IT manager can concentrate on keeping the technology up to date."