Ten Thoughts on Creating a Website: 10. Disaster Recovery

Creating a website represents an investment of time & money. But how do you safguard that? It’s not a tangible item…or is it? The data that makes up your site is indeed tangible – or it should be anyways. Once you have paid your developer for their work, you should receive a written document with your usernames, passwords, and a back up CD with all of your website files AND source files. With this information you can restore your site or work with a new developer if needed.

I have frequently been hired by people who built a site but do not have any of the access information to maintain it. They don’t have any of the artwork they bought, they don’t know where the site is hosted or when it’s due to expire and, in most cases, they are calling me because their previous developer has disappeared. At the conclusion of a project I provide my clients with a Website Data Sheet that documents all of their site access information as well as notates any special functionality we might have used in their project. Whenever a new account is added to their site (say we set up a Constant Contact Newsletter) I add this info and send an updated Data Sheet. I also provide a CD back up of all site & artwork files, and do so periodically and upon request throughout the year.

Your site should be designed based upon industry standard software & technologies. When meeting with a developer, ask what they use. Some common languages are html, css, action script, php, asp.net, and javascript. Common development software programs are Dreamweaver, Flash, Photoshop, and Illustrator. Ideally, your website files should be in these formats, which enable any developer to work with them. If your developer is not available for any reason, you should be able to hire someone new and provide everything they need to carry on.

This does it for my “10 Thoughts on Creating a Website”. I hope you’ve found it useful. Look for more entries on Email Troubleshooting, SEO, Website Add-Ons, and more coming soon!

<<What Do I Do If My Site Goes Down?

Ten Thoughts on Creating a Website: 9. What Do I Do If My Site Goes Down?

If your website or email stops working, you need to know who to contact. Here at Pixel Lava, I serve as the front line of support for my clients. If you have a problem, I want to know about it because it might pertain to other clients. However, if I am not available, my clients know who hosts their website and how to contact that company directly. If you are meeting with a new developer, ask them about this.

For Pixel Lava clients on Blue Host, if your site goes down, call me. If I am not available, call Blue Host toll free at (888) 401-4678. I recommend calling later in the day if possible to avoid being on hold. You can also log in to your website hosting account and view your server status yourself. While Blue Host maintains an impressive record of up time, server problems do occur. In my three years with them I’ve had sites go offline six times and in each case, the site was back up within an hour. I think they’ve been great.

If your email goes down, you will first need to determine where the problem originates. If you are sure that the problem is not your computer or internet connection then do contact me or Blue Host (or whoever your hosting company is). Email has a lot of different parts, I’ll provide some email troubleshooting tips in an upcoming post.

<<How Do I Maintain My Site? -  Disaster Recovery>>

Ten Thoughts on Creating a Website: 8. How Do I Maintain My Site?

Websites that never change are boring but, more importantly, they are ineffective. The web is a place of constant, dynamic change and as information develops, search engines adapt their listings. If your site is never updated, it slides further down in the list of what’s out there. So, maintenance is part of your site, even if you are just starting a new project. When choosing a developer, ask how they handle maintenance. Is it available on an as-needed basis by the hour (that’s how we do it here) or through a monthly contract? What are the turn around times on requests? Who will be doing the maintenance? What if that person is not available?

It’s a good idea to make your website maintenance a regularly scheduled item and not an after thought. If you are a software company, how about posting at least one new Press Release every quarter? Including the website in your real world marketing efforts seems obvious, but is often overlooked. Think about how you might include a new product announcement on the site as an animated banner or some other attention-getting item that will freshen up the look of your home page. If you attend trade shows, provide a list on your site and include a promotion that rewards anyone who visits your booth (Visit us at TradeShow Max and get a free compass keychain!). Keeping the site fresh should be fun and easy. If you are meeting with a new developer, ask what ideas they have for assisting you in keeping the home page interesting.

<<How Do I Get First on Google? – What Do I Do If My Site Goes Down?>>

Ten Thoughts on Creating a Website: 7. How Do I Get First on Google

Unless you have:

1. An incredibly unique name

2. A ton of money

… it’s unlikely that you’ll be “first on Google”. Where your site shows up in Google and other search engine rankings depends on many factors including how your site is coded & built, what & how many links you have, if you are part of any pay-per-click advertising programs, and many more. This area is called Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and it is a multi million dollar industry. Search Engine Optimization Specialists use a wide variety of techniques to boost your site’s rankings but their services can be pricey. A good approach is to start with the basics in your site’s coding, submitting your site to Google and some of the other big directories, and make sure that you are doing real world marketing.

Unless you are selling ads or have a shop on your site, paying for SEO work is unlikely to be cost effective. For some people, it’s irrelevant. If you are a yoga instructor who teaches five classes a week of 20 students, getting 5,000 hits a day on Google is really not going to matter (although I would suggest you start selling advertising!) However, if you have the staffing and capacity to add a lot of clients, then conducting an SEO blitz might be money well spent.

Also keep in mind that your results will, inevitably, decline over time. Why? Because your competitors are also hiring SEO Specialists to get their sites to rank above you! The bottom line is to take Google and other services in perspective. Your site should be easily found using your unique information (searching on your name or business name for example) and then you can work on gathering results for more vague entries over time (searching on “San Diego Yoga Instructor” for example).

<<Email Options – How Do I Maintain My Site?>>

Ten Thoughts on Creating a Website: 6. Email Options

Email consists of three parts:

1. Your email address (info@mycoolsite.com)

2. Your email client (Yahoo or Outlook)

3. Your email configuration

An email account that is associated with your website (info@mycoolsite.com) can be anything you like (screaming_monkey@mycoolsite.com). It is created and configured using your website’s hosting control panel. You may also have a free account that came with your internet service (me@cablecompanyname.com) or a free account online (me@hotmail.com) or an account through work or school (me@workorschoolname.com).

Your email client is the software you use to read, write, and manage your email messages. There are desktop email programs such as Microsoft’s Outlook of Apple ’s Mail and there are web-based services such as Gmail, Yahoo, and Hotmail. AOL has both a desktop program and a web-based service (both of which are horrid … but I digress).

Your email configuration is the instructions for what the name of your account is, where it lives, and how you access it. For my clients, I recommend Gmail. Gmail is a free, web-based service offered by Google. Google has many of the smartest people on earth working for them, they run huge data centers, and they are a billion dollar company. I’d say they are reliable! Unlike Hotmail, Yahoo, and others, Gmail allows you to access a wide variety of accounts from within their system and when you respond, the response stamp comes from the account to which the email was sent. Wait, what’s that mean?! It means that I have ame@thisthingy.com and ame@whatchamacallit.com and ame@whosit.com but I only ever log in to one account, my Gmail one. When someone emails me at ame@whosit.com, they get a response from ame@whosit.com. Cool!

<<What If I Don’t Like Something? – How Do I Get First on Google?>>