Technical maintenance of a website refers to any changes to the site that require alterations to its programming code - eg for the site's graphics and navigation, metadata, database, e-commerce solution. Technical maintenance also refers to adjustments that improve the website's speed and reliability, and monitor usage of the site.
Maintaining the technical aspects of the website requires specialist knowledge and skills in website programming, so technical maintenance generally falls to one person or, for larger websites, a small group of technical experts. The webmaster, as the technician is usually known, would normally receive instructions from the e-business management team and a website manager regarding desired changes to the site.
As with content maintenance and enhancements to the website, this section is concerned with maintenance only, not with large scale changes that would spark a return to the planning phase.
What to do
Appoint a webmaster - a person to manage the technical aspects of the website or to liaise with outside experts.
The webmaster should determine a schedule for technical maintenance that indicates what is to be done daily, weekly, and monthly and what tasks are undertaken only when the need arises. The schedule should include all maintenance items and indicate for each, what associated tasks are to be performed daily, weekly etc.
A technical maintenance list might include some or all of:
- the speed of the site
- hotlinks to other sites - eg validity of the hotlinks
- the reliability of the web server - includes dealing with error reports from the web server
- the speed and reliability of information derived from the database
- email lists - includes removing faulty email addresses
- user sessions, hits and traffic through the site
- the exporting of data collected from online forms to the appropriate personnel
- the integrity and performance of the e-commerce system, if applicable
- interactive elements of the site - eg play-back feature for audio/video
- the use of metadata in the website.
The e-business management committee is responsible for every aspect of the website and email technologies. Depending on the nature of the organisation and the website, it may meet weekly, fortnightly, monthly or even less frequently.
What to do
In terms of its responsibility for overseeing the effective day-to-day maintenance of the e-business, the management team should address at each meeting:
- a report on maintenance activities undertaken since last meeting:
- updating - eg a report on sections that have been updated other than the normal regime
- enhancements - eg what new text, images, audio have been added to existing sections of the site and what other improvements have been made
- technical maintenance - eg day-today reliability of the web server, speed of the site
- resourcing issues - time, people, equipment
- the efficiency and effectiveness of the maintenance solution provided by the developers or of editing software solutions - eg DreamWeaver
- the maintenance budget
- quality control - effectiveness, what is not working, where errors were made and lessons learnt
- risks and challenges targets for the next period.
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