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!
