Maintaining Your Website
An item many forget to consider while thinking about their web design project is "Who will maintain the information on your site?".
It may not seem important at the beginning of the project, but it will become important sooner or later. Perhaps you've added a new product or service that you'd like to include on your site. What if your phone number or office hours change? Some sites use the web to advertise events, who will add the events and take them down when the event date has come and gone?
Below we've listed some of the options a site owner has for maintaining the content on their website:
Modifying/Adding HTML pages:
Modifying and adding HTML pages yourself may require the purchase of software for editing your website as well as training on using the software, HTML coding and transferring files between your computer and your web server. For clients with little time or interest in learning website maintenance, this option is the least attractive.
CMS (Content Management System):
Content Management Systems can be used with your website to simplify maintaining and adding site content. Minimal user training will be necessary and the system is accessed online, eliminating the need for software purchases (except for the CMS itself) and transferring files. CMS is an attractive option for long term site maintenance but implementing it increases your initial costs in configuration time.
On Demand Professional Services:
Engaging a web design professional to maintain your site is the simplest choice of all because no training is required. Your web designer will maintain the look and feel of your site, logical structure, file size and will add pages within a timeframe agreed upon ahead of time. Costs for on demand professional services will vary based on the immediacy of your need and the frequency of changes. Rates can be calculated hourly or can be included in an annual site maintenance package.
When working with Tech Lizard Web Design and IT, we will approach the subject of site maintenance and assist you in developing a plan that makes sense for you and your business. We're capable of designing sites that can be maintained by their owners as well as providing full on demand professional services at reasonable rates. Be sure to Contact Us today for more information.
- This article was written by Michele Gilhouse of Tech Lizard Web Design and IT.