Managing websites

Elements of website management

Website design and development
Specifying a website and creating a design brief should involve extensive online research, including analysis of competitor sites, and reviewing the way that features (such as shopping carts) are implemented on other websites. This will be facilitated by the speed of a broadband connection, and its being always-on for you to pursue your research.

If you work with external designers and developers you are likely to have an involved collaboration involving:

developing the brief
compiling research
reviewing design sketches and visualisations
assembling material
evaluating prototypes
testing site features

This may involve you reviewing material on your collaborators’ server, posting material and testing the site on an external or an in-house server. In the former case you will need regular access to a high-bandwidth connection, and in the latter an always-on connection will enable your collaborators to access your server remotely.

Even if you are just receiving files by email from your designers, you are likely to benefit from the bandwidth of a broadband connection, as the files are likely to be bigger than typical attachments.

Website hosting and backup
A website is ‘hosted’ on a web server. This server may be hosted in a number of ways. You may:

share space on another (‘virtual’) server
have a dedicated server remotely hosted
host a server in your offices (providing you have the right broadband package and subject to the terms of use of your ISP)

The third option gives you most control over your server, though you will need to ensure that it is secure, appropriately located, well-maintained, and regularly backed up.

Even if your server is hosted off-site, you may choose to host a ‘development’ server in house, on which new material is posted and tested before being copied to the live server. If you chose to have the development server or the live server in house, you will need the always-on and fast aspects of a broadband connection.

As with your other servers, you may choose offsite backup as part of your strategy (see the ‘Technical Support’ white paper), perhaps by backing it up to your office network. Either way, you will need the speed of a broadband connection to make this possible.

Website maintenance
Most websites will require daily, or at least weekly, updates. This might involve posting company news, adding new stock, publishing new marketing material, updating contact information, or modifying records in a web-linked database. Part of the design and development process should focus on how these updates will be made.

Updating a site may require copying many files back and forth, or using a web interface that makes connections to the server. It may also involve posting large files (including time-based media or Flash flies). Being able to easily update your website will make life easier for your staff. Both the always-on and high bandwidth aspects of broadband will make this easier and faster.

There are likely to be many people on your staff who ‘own’ a part of the website and should be involved in updating it. Giving internet access to all your staff is much easier with a broadband connection.

Web stats
Web servers record data about each access to the websites they host. These data can be processed to reveal information about how people are navigating the site, which products they view but do not purchase on an e-commerce site, and from where they are being referred to your site. Processing may be done by your ISP, or for more control you may choose to do it yourself. Knowing how well you site is working, and how people are using it, can help you improve it and make it more valuable.

For a well-used site, these log files will be very large (possibly over 100 megabytes for a month of activity), and the software that processes them will also need to go online to identify from where your site has been accessed (by translating the IP addresses into domain names). You will benefit from the high speed and always-on aspects of broadband if you choose to download and analyse your web logs.

Collaboration
Many techniques discussed in the ‘Online collaboration’ white paper will be very useful in the context of a website design and development project, including ‘Conversing in real time’, ‘Sharing a workspace’, ‘Gathering information’, ‘Sharing a screen’, ‘File and version management’, ‘Commenting on or editing a document’, and ‘Sharing tasks’.

Tools and services

Collaboration
Many of the tools listed in the ‘Online collaboration’ white paper will be very useful in the context of a website design and development project.

Instant messaging

AOL Instant Messenger
www.aol.com

Microsoft MSN Messenger
messenger.msn.com

Meetings and conferences

Microsoft Net Meeting
www.microsoft.com/netmeeting

BT MeetMe
www.bt.com/meetme

Project management

Team Direction
www.teamdirection.com

eProject
www.eproject.com

Website design and development
There are a number of tools that focus on website building and maintenance.

Macromedia Dreamweaver and Macromedia Contribute
Dreamweaver is used for web design, development and maintenance. It allows multiple people to collaborate, assemble assets, annotate files, and flag up progress in site development. It is also able to integrate other Macromedia assets such as Flash. Dreamweaver integrates with third-party website tools such as Lasso Studio. Contribute is an adjunct to Dreamweaver that allows people with little training or Dreamweaver knowledge to update elements of a website designated by Dreamweaver.
Platform: Windows, MacOS
www.macromedia.com/dreamweaver
www.macromedia.com/contribute

Microsoft Office FrontPage and Microsoft Word and Excel
FrontPage works in a similar fashion to Dreamweaver and Adobe GoLive. With FrontPage Server Extensions installed on an appropriate Windows server, it is possible to create additional functionality such as server-based forms, polls, and discussion boards. Both Word and Excel are able to create ‘HTML’, and files can be saved for sharing on a web server. Word is useful for assembling textual material for the website and Word documents can be linked together to create a skeleton website. Excel is useful for project planning, particularly documenting assets, material and resources needed for the website.
Platform: Windows
www.microsoft.com/FrontPage
www.microsoft.com/office

Adobe GoLive
This product integrates well with Adobe’s other web asset creation tools including Photoshop and Illustrator, though this is more of a benefit to the web developer. Adobe GoLive also integrates well with Adobe Acrobat using the GoLive PDF Module plug-in. Adobe’s Web Workgroup Server allows group management of assets to help improve productivity.
Platform: Windows, MacOS
www.adobe.com/products/golive

Finally, many hosting companies that provide shared web space also provide web-based tools for making basic website updates.

Web site hosting
Your ISP is likely to offer the first, and possibly the second, of these hosting options.

Shared space (‘virtual’ server)
Your website will be hosted along with many others on the same web server, but this will be transparent to the users, who will see a website at your web host names <www.yourco.co.uk>. The hosting company manages all the technology and gives you the ability to do some simple configuration and upload pages. As your technical demands grow you may be able to outsource some new functions you require but in the end this option will be limiting. However it will work well for most SMEs starting off using the web.

Dedicated server
Your web site is hosted on dedicated server, and you have greater access to the underlying systems and the ability to install new applications, such as shopping carts or personalisation tools. However it is also easy to mess up the server, and you will have to install system and software patches and upgrades yourself.

In-house server
This is a similar setup to having a dedicated server but hosted on your own network. This option allows you to easily upgrade the server (adding more disk space or RAM) and install system updates, or migrate to a more powerful machine. However, you will be responsible for ensuring that the connection of the server to the internet is maintained, and that the server is protected from power failures and environmental effects (heat, moisture, etc).

Web stats

WebTrends
www.netiq.com/webtrends

Funnel Web Analyzer
www.quest.com/funnel_web

What do you need
For most of these activities you will need a broadband internet connection. If you want to host and control your own web site, and particularly if you want to run additional applications or services beyond those offered by typical web hosts or ISPs, you will need to purchase one or a number of servers. You will need to buy server and client software and invest in some staff training. You will also need to find or hire designers or developers to work with you.

Next steps

Where to go
For specific advice on which applications discussed might fit your business needs, or on finding and evaluating suppliers and products, you can contact your local, government-funded, Business Link service (www.businesslink.org). You might also review the UK Online for Business web site (www.ukonlineforbusiness.gov.uk).

Look for Web suppliers at:
uk.dir.yahoo.com/Business_and_Economy/Business_to_Business/Communications_and_Networking/Internet_and_World_Wide_Web/

Learn on
See the white paper on ‘Online Publishing’ for specific information on managing more editorially-oriented web sites.

Web Design for Business
The UK Design Council’s resource for guidance on commissioning and managing web site design.
www.WebDesignForBusiness.org.uk

Watch out for...

A working workflow
While it is important that the appropriate employees have ownership of their section of the web site, you will need to develop some workflow process that at least ensures that new or edited copy is proofed before it is published online - just as you would have for a document that was to be printed. You should also check new copy and images from a legal an intellectual property perspective, review them in the light of your company identity, and ensure that they (particularly images) will not affect the performance of your site.

Why are you asking?
If you collect data from customers or potential customers, indicate to them why you need it and how this data will be used. You should also consider the legal issues around storing data, detailed at the government Data Protection web site (www.dataprotection.gov.uk) site for more information.

The server out on the web
Web sites are vulnerable to intrusion and ‘hacking’ (though not as much as other servers because a web server only allows access to one directory, where the web pages are stored). Your security arrangements for your web site may not be the same as they are for other servers in your office, particularly if the web server is externally hosted. However, you need to ensure that you pay as much attention to the security of your web server as your other servers, not least because sites used for sales or customer management are likely to be linked to databases containing confidential information.