BSBEBU401A Review and maintain a website

Update website

ReadingUpdate website 1

Reading 1Overview 3Who will check the website? 3What needs to be changed? 4

Content.........................................................................................................................4

Structure......................................................................................................................5

Technical infrastructure.......................................................................................6

Organisational requirements and protocols...............................................7

Who will create new content? 7Who will approve it? 8How will the content be changed? 10

Change processes.................................................................................................10

Complexity...............................................................................................................10

Type of website.....................................................................................................10

Upload method......................................................................................................12

Summary 13Activities 14

1. Web skills............................................................................................................14

2. Adding new technologies.............................................................................14

3. Code validation.................................................................................................15

4. FTP......................................................................................................................... 15

5. Quiz........................................................................................................................16

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OverviewAn organisation is a dynamic entity, constantly shifting and changing. As a result, information about the organisation is constantly changing. Whether it is the release of new products, change of personnel, new procedures, price changes or announcing a sale, information is always in need of modification and updating. For many organisations their internet and intranet websites are a repository for much of this information. A large amount of dynamically changing information stored in websites poses several challenges. Developing a website entails a considerable investment of resources into its planning, design and implementation.

After this initial investment in establishing a website there is a danger that its content will become stagnant and inaccurate if it is not well maintained. Visitors need to be able to trust a website to provide accurate and timely information. A website that shows signs of being out-of-date cause visitors to lose faith in the sites reliability and usefulness. Planning for ongoing maintenance should be part of the websites initial development.

Different types of sites require different levels of maintenance. An organisations website might only provide a basic company overview, contact details and their annual reports. In this case the site might only need to be updated when contact details change, when a new report is released or the organisation undergoes significant change. In other cases an organisations website might provide an online store for their customers, allow resources to be uploaded, provide a daily RSS feed etc. In these cases daily maintenance is required.

Planning website maintenance also involves determining who will be responsible for the maintenance. Who will check the website? What needs to be changed? Who will create new content? Who will approve it? How will the content be changed?

Who will check the website?In most cases there will be a mixture of people involved in checking a website.

In a well designed website there will be visitor behaviour data that is automatically logged and the ability for visitors to provide feedback via forms and/or email. In this case visitors are providing free and vital checks/validation for website content and usability.

An organisation might also have a service/maintenance agreement with the website designer, your ISP or website hosting company. In

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this case both automatic and manual website maintenance procedures might be in place. For example, the website hosting company will most likely be automatically monitoring the hardware that houses the organisations website. Any hardware failure of disruption will automatically trigger an alert to the hosting provider and possibly directly to you.

The people with the best knowledge about an organisation’s information are usually those within the organisation. For this reason it is important to have internal staff routinely check website content. A specific person may be allocated this task or various sections of the website might need to be checked by in-house experts. For example, a staff member form a company’s technical division might need to check that product specifications listed on the site are accurate. The frequency of this process depends on how often the data is being changed. Sites experiencing lots of updates, additions and subtractions will require careful proofing.

What needs to be changed?When reviewing a website there are many changes that will become apparent. Some changes will improve usability, some changes will increase visitors’ page view time and some changes will make the website more efficient. However, the changes that are to be most sought after and prioritised in the change management system are superseded and inaccurate information. No matter what form the information is stored in it must be accurate and current. This is one of the key features of a website that instils visitor faith in the websites content.

But what part of the website needs to be changed? The focus of this reading is on maintaining a website’s content. However, there are three key areas of a website that require maintenance:

1. content

2. structure

3. technical infrastructure.

Content

Content refers to the information stored in the website. This consists of:

text – blocks of text, hyperlinks, navigation text, labels, alternative text for images etc

images – photos, drawings, diagrams, charts, graphs etc

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media – audio, video, interactive components such as Flash etc

documents – reports, papers, policies, communications, newsletters etc

It is easy to focus on reviewing and updating the textual information within a website, particularly if it is a text heavy site. However, visitors pay closer attention to the more visual and interactive elements especially during their first visit. Don’t neglect the other forms of content. Here is a checklist of some key items to check:

Does the alternative text on images accurately reflect the contents of the image? Remember search engines read the alternative text and image file name not the image itself.

Do images/video show any out-of-date locations, staff or events?

Are the images clear and of adequate quality?

Does navigation text reflect the organisations current structure and business objectives?

Do all hyperlinks work correctly? Some links will be within the site and some may link to external sites.

Do any audio files contain the voices of staff that have left? Are they of adequate quality?

Has a document been released that has not yet been uploaded to the website?

Are the documents easy to download for low-bandwidth users?

Are downloadable documents in a file format that is secure and standardised? For example Adobe pdf documents.

Structure

Typically when designing a website the designer will create storyboards and wireframes of the pages of a site and how the navigation ties them all together. This process defines the overall structure of the website and has a significant impact on its usability. A website might be filled with useful informative and engaging material but poor structure and navigation will prevent the user from getting to this material efficiently. Visitors will quickly lose patience if they cannot find the information they are seeking.

Because of the impact structure has on website visitors it must be included in the review and maintenance processes. A useful review exercise is to map out a storyboard of an organisations existing website and comparing this to a storyboard or hierarchy chart of the organisations operations/divisions/product lines etc. You might find

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that an organisational chart shows a large finance section but this is not reflected in the website. This may be exactly as it should be for a private company with no public financial reporting obligations. However, for a publicly listed company it would be necessary to include a place on the website where shareholders and investors can access financial reports and statistics etc.

A careful review of user feedback and analysis of page visit data can reveal information that informs the maintenance of a website’s structure. For example:

Data might show that a large volume of visitors jump to the site map page within 30 seconds after arriving at the site. This might be an indication that the navigation on the home page is not clear or may be missing key pages.

On a website that has a search function visitors are often searching for an annual report. However, you annual reports are located on a page called yearly reports.

User testing shows that several of the home page navigation items are never used. Perhaps they could be removed or made into a sub-navigation element to streamline the overall navigation.

Technical infrastructure

This refers to the IT hardware, software and systems that are driving the website. These are the behind-the-scenes or backend components and have a strong impact on the capabilities that a website can support.

Although you may not be trained in IT or have strong IT skills you should not avoid the technical requirements of maintaining a website. It will be of great benefit to you to learn the basic principles and technologies so that you can identify possible IT related problems with the website and effectively communicate with technical staff to solve these problems.

Below is a list of some of the key technical infrastructure items:

Hosting server – Is it shared or dedicated to your website? How much storage capacity is allocated to the site? How much memory does the server have? What is its processing power and network speed etc?

Network – What is the speed and reliability of both the hosts network and their connection to the internet? How many other sites share the network capacity?

Server software – What operating system is it running (Windows, Linux etc)? What internet server service is it

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running (Apache, Internet Information Service etc)?

Databases – Does the server have a database system installed? If so, which one (SQL Server, MySQL, Oracle etc)?

Server side scripting languages – Are any scripting languages installed (ASP/.NET, PHP, Pearl, Python, Java etc)?

Website code – What types of code are used in the website (HTML, XHTML, CSS, XML, JavaScript etc)?

Multimedia content – Does the website include multimedia content such as Adobe Flash, streaming video or audio, RSS feeds etc?

Accessibility – Has the site had special accessibility features built-in, such as text alternatives for multimedia components, a vision impaired friendly colour scheme etc?

Familiarity with the technical infrastructure of the website you will be reviewing and maintaining will make you more aware of what can and cannot be changed with the current site.

If you need to improve your technical skills you will find many useful tutorials at www.w3schools.com.

Organisational requirements and protocols

Content, structure and the technical infrastructure of a website needs to be carefully controlled. Where information is placed on a website, what information is allowed to be made public, the tone of language used, the sites appearance and many other website features cannot be left to be arbitrarily decided by those maintaining the website. As with all business processes there are business priorities, resource limitations, legal and other restrictions that govern what can and cannot be done and how it should be carried out. Familiarise yourself with business procedures, policies, legal obligations and other relevant documentation. If a specific website maintenance policy exists follow it carefully and make sure it is up-to-date. If a policy does not exist, create one or at lease draft a range of ideas containing relevant points which will help you manage a process.

Who will create new content?Maintaining a website may involve modifying any of the above mentioned information types and their supporting systems. In some cases an organisation’s website may be maintained by an individual. In other cases an assortment of contracted specialists may be used. No matter who is responsible for website maintenance the right skills must be aligned with the type of change required. Also note that

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creating content does not necessarily mean that website editing skills are required. Often a non-technical person/s may write, design or create content but a more experienced website developer may integrate the material into the website.

Here are some examples:

A product description needs updating – the marketing team writes a new description.

Downloads are very slow – the host provider supplies greater bandwidth to the hosting server.

A diagram is incorrectly labelled – a graphic artist modifies the image file.

The site navigation is confusing to visitors – a website designer maps out a new navigation structure.

The staff list page needs to be automatically updated when staff come and go – a website developer/programmer links the staff list page to the HR database.

In each case the right person must be chosen to create content to help maintain the website.

Although this section is entitled ‘Who will create new content?’ there is also the question of who will delete old content. These go hand in hand and often it is the same person. Those with the skills to create new content are most likely able to make informed decision about what material is out-of-date and should be removed.

Who will approve it?It is wise to have proposed changes to website content checked by someone else, preferably someone not involved in designing or writing the change. It is very easy not to pick up mistakes in your own work that may be obvious to a fresh pair of eyes. In small business it can be difficult to get a wide range of checks but a review of the changes by at least one other person is better than no check at all.

For public websites it is important to establish an editing and approval process. Intranets also need policies governing their editing but they need not be as stringent as for public websites. Once a draft change has been created it should be edited by an appropriate section of the organisation. For example, a change to a product’s technical specification page should be checked by someone with technical knowledge about the product. In large organisations and/or where large volumes of website changes are made a specialist editor may be warranted. An editor can focus on spelling, grammar, style, consistency and usability.

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A good source of information for checking website content is an organisation’s off-line material. This includes brochures, reports, newsletters, advertising material and other non-public data stores. Compare this content with what is on the website. Are there any discrepancies? Off-line content can also be a good source of new content. For example, as a new product brochure is released the photos taken or product description may be able to be integrated into the website. This helps give the website a more current feel.

It is also important not to forget to check the accessibility of your website. Have you catered for people with a disability? Can a deaf person navigate the site? Can a vision impaired person change the font size? What happens when screen reader software tries to interpret a page? For more information visit the Web Accessibility Initiative – www.w3.org/WAI/. Vision Australia also offer some excellent free tools that can be used to check how a website will appear for vision impaired persons – www.visionaustralia.org.au/info.aspx?page=1985

Once the proposed change is edited/reviewed an appropriate person should approve its integration into the website. It may also be necessary for a manager or business owner to sign-off on the proposed change. They must be able to check if the changes are technically feasible, what impact it may have on the websites performance and who will be given the responsibility to integrate the change.

Part of the editing/approval process should include code validation. Both before and after integrating a change to a website any code changes (e.g. HMTL, XHTML, CSS, XML etc) should be put through automated validation tools. All of the leading web design software, such as Adobe Dreamweaver, Microsoft Expression Web and Visual Studio have built in code validation, browser compatibility checks and hyperlink checks. You can set which code types and which type and version of web browsers you wish to check. This software automatically scans the website and reports on what code will create incompatibilities, what browsers your site has incompatibilities with and what hyperlinks may be broken. There are also website validation tools online, such as The World Wide Web Consortium’s (world wide web international standards organisation) validation tools – www.w3.org/QA/Tools/#validators

It is not uncommon for a single person, possibly you, to create, edit and sign-off on changes. However, this scenario is not ideal. Where possible content changes should be checked by others.

How will the content be changed?Problems with the website have been identified; recommended

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changes have been made and approved; changes have been drafted, edited and approved. Now the change must be integrated into the website. The questions at this stage are who will make the change and how will the change be carried out? The answer is determined by three factors:

1. What are the established change processes?

2. How complex is the change?

3. What type of website needs to be changed?

4. What is the upload process for modified or new content?

Change processes

It is common for external website design companies to build an organisation’s website. In addition to the initial design of the site the web design company may be contracted to maintain the site and implement any changes sent to them from a website change management process within the organisation. This is an example of a commonly established website maintenance process. Other examples may include a single website maintainer who receives change requests, designs and implements the change. In large organisations there may be a dedicated web design team as part of the greater IT team who take responsibility for all levels of website modification. There may also be no established processes at all, in which case you will have to establish your own processes to suit your organisation’s needs and resources.

Complexity

Obviously not everyone with website maintenance responsibilities is an expert in server-side scripting and database programming. The skills of the person responsible for editing the website must be matched to the complexity of the required change. A simple spelling error in some onscreen text could be edited in a simple text editor by someone with very basic knowledge of HTML. Linking a product catalogue to a database of product is better suited to an expert website developer/programmer.

Type of website

There are three general types of websites:

1. Custom built

2. Template built

3. Content Management Systems (CMS)

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Custom built sites are specifically designed to exactly match an organisation’s needs. Although some basic templates may have been used to establish the site, the majority of the websites structure and content are ‘hand-built’. This results in an efficient website that matches precisely the needs of the organisation. However, it is also the most expensive and difficult to maintain for any website of significant size.

Template built websites utilise either layout/code template files or automated systems that allow you to run through a ‘wizard’ program which asks a series of design decisions and will output a completed site. When used with web design software such as Adobe Dreamweaver they drastically reduce the development and editing time. Templates still require some editing knowledge and provide the least flexibility. Automated systems have similar advantages and disadvantages as template based websites but require little or no web design knowledge. Many website hosting companies offer some form of ‘wizard’ based web design tool. An example website building tool is Moogo – www.moogo.com.

CMSs offer a good balance between fully custom-built sites and template built sites. They offer standard layout and component templates but allow for a high degree of customisation. Perhaps one of their greatest features is the ability to control who can edit various sections of a website and what they can edit within that section. For example, the lead web designer for a company will have full control of all aspects of the CMS allowing them to edit anything; the marketing manager is able to edit the text descriptions of the company’s products; the graphic artist can only modify images; and the company secretary can modify the websites event calendar. Each staff role can be granted the appropriate level of security access or given appropriate access passwords. This distributes the burden of maintaining a website and caters to all skill levels. The most common problem with CMSs being modified by multiple contributors is keeping track of the approval process and maintaining a consistent overall style and tone for the website.

CMSs also offer special features such as the ability to check out web pages and documents to prevent others overriding changes, automatic saving of multiple versions so that a file can be rolled back to a previous version and site-wide styles without a knowledge of CSS

Some examples of CMSs include commercial systems such as, Microsoft Sharepoint, Vignette, Interwoven Teamsite, EMC Documentum; and open source systems such as, Joomla and Drupal. There are also specialised CMSs which target specific uses such as education/training, document management, collaboration tools etc. For example, many education institutions use Moodle, an open source Learning Management System. This is essentially a CMS with added functionality specific to the education market.

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Upload method

When using a CMS the file modification and upload process is handled by the CMS. Typically you navigate to the page that requires editing, switch to edit mode and make the changes directly to the onscreen content. This dramatically simplifies the editing process and makes it available to a much wider audience rather than just code savvy web developers. Some of the ‘wizard’ style webpage builders will also allow direct changes to the website, particularly those systems run by the website hosting company as they have direct access to the server storing the webpage files.

Custom built, template based and some ‘wizard’ style website tools will require either direct file access or File Transfer Protocol (FTP) access.

When a website is hosted on a server within an organisations network you need someone with the IT skills to be able to setup direct access to the websites files and folders. This could be setup as a network file share and displayed as a drive on the computer of the staff responsible for maintaining the content. Simply opening files, making changes using appropriate software and saving those changes back to the network share will update the website. You can use fine grained security permissions to control folder and file access. Although this system is very simple for the maintainers it involves a lot of security maintenance by an IT team, especially if there are a large amount of maintainers. There is also a risk that files or folders will be accidently deleted as this is very easy to do on network file shares.

Often, though, a website is located off-site and is stored on a hosting provider’s server. Typically the hosting provider will offer a file upload/download/deletion tool but they are often clunky to use and don’t allow for easy editing of large numbers of files and folders.

When transferring files to a host provider’s server, FTP allows for greater flexibility and safety in terms of accidently deleted files. FTP is just a protocol for transmitting and manipulating files over the internet (and other networks). Its power comes from the wide range of FTP software available that utilises FTP to give you access to a remotely hosted website and perform all of the file management tasks needed to maintain a website. However, FTP is insecure as it transmits usernames and passwords without encryption. These can easily be picked up by internet users sniffing or listening to internet traffic. Encryption can be added by using SFTP (SSH File Transfer Protocol), or FTPS (FTP over SSL).

It can be seen that as you move from CMSs to network share access to FTP the level of complexity in the upload process increases. Those responsible for uploading website content need to have the

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right skill level to safely and efficiently manage a websites files.

SummaryAn organisation’s website can be a complex and difficult system to maintain. Keep in mind a few basic principles to streamline the process:

focus on inaccurate and out-of-date content

remove sections of the site that are rarely visited or no longer current

listen to visitor feedback and keep a constant lookout for content that is missing

don’t cut corners–always follow organisational policies and procedures

keep the website aligned with current business goals

use automated tools to check/validate the website and allow for easy editing

keep website access security settings up-to-date and change passwords on a regular basis.

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ActivitiesThis section has activities that you can do yourself or with others to develop your skills and knowledge in this topic.

1. Web skills

In many cases you will probably rely on the technical skills of web de-signers and programmers to implement website changes. However, small, simple changes can easily be made with a small investment in understanding web design and HTML code.

Go to www.w3schools.com and work through the following tutorials:

Web Building

Web Hosting

Learn HMTL - HTML Basic

If you are responsible for making more complex changes to a website it is also recommended that you work through several other www.w3schools.com tutorials including:

Learn XHTML

Learn CSS

Learn JavaScipt

w3schools is also a great tutorial site for many other website technolo-gies that you may have to have some level of familiarity with. If you have difficulty with any of the jargon used on w3schools search for the same term at http://en.wikipedia.org where you will often find a de-tailed explanation.

2. Adding new technologies

Websites can often be improved by updating or adding new technolo-gies. Most often you won’t have to add these technologies yourself but it is important to have an understanding of how these technologies can improve a website.

Write a report about the following technologies briefly explaining what they are and how they could help improve a website:

CSS

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JavaScript

Adobe Flash

Server-side scripting

Linking to a database

RSS feeds

3. Code validation

It is important to check the validity and cross-browser support of a website. Not doing so can lead to a website not appearing as intended on various platforms and web browsers.

Visit www.w3.org/QA/Tools/#validators and submit a webpage to check its validity. You can also do this for link checking and CSS doc-uments.

If you use webpage editing software such as Adobe Dreamweaver there are built in validators and browser checkers you should familiar-ise yourself with.

Note: Your teacher may supply you with specific pages to validate. If not you can use pages from your company’s website or simple save a website you visit on the internet.

4. FTP

When updating a website you typically make a change to a file on the com-puter you are working at then upload the new version of the file to the hosted website via File Transfer Protocol (FTP).

Your task is to practise the process of connecting to an ftp server (preferably securely) and uploading/downloading files.

Do to this you will need an FTP client. Download and install FileZilla from http://filezilla-project.org/.

To practise connecting to an FTP server there are three options:

1. connect to an FTP server that has been setup by your teacher

2. connect to an ftp server setup on your computer (for Windows users try FileZilla Server or Microsoft’s built-in IIS – do a Google search for help on how to setup IIS)

3. connect to a public ftp server (this will probably limit you to only downloading files) - www.ftp-sites.org

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For more information on FTP client software and FTP server software have a look at the following:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_FTP_client_software

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_FTP_server_software

5. Quiz

Try this self-check quiz to see how well you understand some of the ideas in this topic.

Question 1:

Checking a websites content is best contracted out to a web design company. True or false?

1. true

2. false

Question 2:

Website navigation is an example of:

1. content

2. structure

3. technical infrastructure

4. system components

Question 3:

HTML, XHTML, CSS and JavaScript are examples of:

1. content

2. structure

3. technical infrastructure

4. system components

Question 4:

Writing content for a new set of banner ads would best be done by:

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1. a web programmer

2. the marketing team

3. a graphic artist

4. an IT manager

Question 5:

Accessibility refers to a websites ability to:

1. be online for visitors to access

2. allow easy navigation throughout the sites various con-tent sections

3. be accessed by visitors using various computer platforms

4. cater for the needs of visitors that may have a disability

Question 6:

Code validation is important to ensure that the website works as ex-pected across multiple platforms and web browsers. True or false?

1. true

2. false

Question 7:

The type of website that is the easiest to modify is:

1. template built

2. CMS

3. custom built

4. Wizard built

Question 8:

FTP is a secure method of transferring files to a web server. True or false?

1. true

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2. false

Question 9:

Which of the following is an example of an open file format that is appropriate for creating downloadable versions of complex docu-ments for a website?

1. .pdf

2. .doc

3. .txt

4. .rtf

Question 10:

All changes to a public facing website should have some form of checking process. True or false?

1. true

2. false

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