Maintaining Your Own Web Site

The ins and outs of updating and maintaining your own web site are many. There are both pros and cons to consider before making a decision on this. I'm going to attempt to point out the most important things you should consider so that you can make an informed decision.

It's important that you look closely at what you hope to gain from updating your own web site and what tasks you wish to be able to perform for the site. Certainly, if all you want to be able to do is to edit a bit of text, add or delete a link or change a simple photo now and then, it can make sense to be able to do so on your own. If however, the updates you expect to be needed for your site are more involved, then a user updateable site is maybe not the best option for you but instead it's to your advantage to work with your designer via a Maintenance Contract.

Discuss Options With Your Designer

Whatever your goals are with regards to updating your web site on your own, it's to your advantage to discuss them fully with your designer before proceeding. Your web designer can explain to you just what you will and will not be able to do if you wish to have your site developed as a Content Management System also known as a CMS.

What you decide between the two of you may have a tremendous bearing on how your web site is initally constructed. If you do not share your wishes to update your own site with your designer up front before the work begins, you site may not be developed to allow for you to update your own site. To convert it later, could be quite costly.

A site designed so that the site owner and his or her designated maintenance personnel can be more costly in it's initial development stages as the designer must develop the site so that the user is able to perform the tasks. Generally, this involves some kind of database development and additional coding in order to help you not alter the rest of the site. Database costs are usually higher start up costs than a static site. Other considerations must be taken into account when putting the site together.

Considerations

1) How much "web savvy" knowledge does the person hold who will be updating the site? It's many times not just a point and click, fill in the blanks operation but instead can be quite the time consuming and costly learning experience. If developing a quality web site really was so simple as many seem to think, professional web designers would be out of business!

2) Does the user have the proper text updating and photo resizing and optimization software? If not, there are (sometimes hefty) costs involved to purchase these tools. Then you must consider the time it will take you to learn the programs in order to be able to use them and coordinate their use with the web site.

3) Do they pick up instructions quickly or will you have to spend a substantial amount of money getting this person trained?

4) What about the time involved in updating and maintaining your web site? Updating your web site is not something you do on a daily basis. What may take you an hour or more to do will probably take your web designer less than half the time to accomplish. While you are updating your site, you are spending time away from your business. Can you afford to do this?

5) What if you inadvertently break your site and you don't know how to fix it? You must go back to your designer. This not only gives you a not so gentle bright red glow to your face but adds to the time away from your business and money out of your pocket. In many instances a site break occurs at the most inopportune time possible and fixing a broken site is quite often more costly than if you'd had your designer do it for you in the first place!

Now just what are you going to do about that fast approaching big online sale you've advertised? What if your designer cannot get to the repair job immediately? Your site then emains broken until he or she can - which will cost you money in lost sales.

Some designers charge an additional fee for fixing a broken web site or for a rush job feesif you need it done in a hurry. Are you ready to spend that extra money? If you develop a web site on your own and find it's not working right or break it, then you have to locate a designer to do the repair. This can take up quite a bit of your time.

User-Ability

6) Does the user know how to write content properly in order to obtain the best search engine results? If not, are you willing to pay the costs and spend the time to learn?

7) Does the user understand basic web site concepts such as coding, browser issues, current standards, load time issues, screen resolution needs, site visitor needs and the list goes on. Even the best CMS has aspects about it that the not-so-techy person will not understand nor be able to use without great difficulty at best, not at all in some instances, or at substantial cost to be trained. Most Content Mangement Systems do not appear " out of the box" like you imagined your web site would look. That pretty picture on the box can be very deceiving! I'll bet you didn't know you had to make a CMS look the way you want it to. Most if not all come with templates and/or can be customized, but this can be an extremely time consuming process.

8) How much hair do you have on your head and how much of it would you like to keep? The general public has been given the idea that putting together a fully functional, professional looking, well rated and respectable web site is a piece of cake and that anyone can do it. Look around, you'll find many a site offering templates and "do it yourself" options. This also holds true for updating and maintaining a site.

I can tell you from years of experience this is absolutely and totally false information. For a non-webbie person to accomplish this on their own would be a miracle in itself. Even the best of web designers deal with issues on each and every site they do. You can bet that if a designer spends eight hours trying to figure out a problem - it's going to take one who's not skilled in web development at least twice that amount of time to figure things out.

Not all CMS's are Alike

9) Content Management Systems are not all alike. They each have their own user updateable areas and those that are not user updateable. They each offer their own way of doing things. Some are more user friendly than others but this also depends on the technical levels of the user. There really is no way to provide every user with the specific functionaily they want in any one CMS. Concessions must be made. The only way to do this is to develop the site as a custom database under user specified needs and there's still no guarantee the non-techy person will be able to manage it properly. Although developing a site specifically designed for your needs is possible, the database costs involved can be extremely high.

Making an Informed Decision

We is not trying to discourage you from taking on the tasks involved in minor updating and maintenance of your web site. In fact, we encourage those who do have the time, knowledge and funding to do this to proceed with a Content Management System. We do however, feel it's vital for you to have this information and ask yourself the same questions in order for you to make an informed decision as to whether or not you wish to go this route.

These are just a few of the issues to ponder when making your decision to go with a user updateable web site. If after reading them over you feel confident you can handle it, that you're willing to absorb the costs and spend the time to learn - by all means ask your designer to develop a CMS site for you! But, if you have any doubts about your capabilities in these areas or perhaps don't have the funding to be able to afford the additional software, training and time involved it's better you let your web designer handle them. After all - it's what we do best and what we do every day so that you can handle what you do best ... your business!