Re: We Need A Website Update Procedure Tip

[Megan Golding <mgolding -at- secureworks -dot- net>]

Sylvia Braunstein is looking for tips on adding news flashes, releases,
new products, brochures and so on for a corporate Web site.

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First off: As Sandy Harris has already suggested, version control with
CVS is an excellent idea. This keeps an authoritative copy of current
documents in the same place while allowing multiple people access to the
source for easy updates.

Here is an infrastructure that is fast and spreads the burden of web
site management over several individuals:

1. Get assistants in every department that will be contributing content.
For me, I have help from Marketing team members. They do all content
updates using Dreamweaver.

2. Use a revision control system such as CVS or Microsoft's VSS. The key
is that you should always be able to retreive any older version of a
page in case you accidentially muck something up.

3. Automate. Like Keith Cronin, I have scripts at my disposal to "build"
a new website (and to roll back to the previous version, as well). This
helps to prevent human errors.

4. Set up a mailing list for all requests to update the web site and
train your company to use it. Unless a request comes to my "webdev"
list, I don't make a change. When I make a change, I provide the log
message from my version control system and the date/time the site was
updated. This is makes tracking work much easier.

5. Use server-side includes (SSIs) to include plain text files for the
frequently updated items. For example, create a shell of a page for news
flashes and create an include statement for a new headline. This helps
those who dont know or are intimidated by HTML to add content easily.

6. Divide responsibility for portions of the web site among different
departments. This may not work well with some of the other ideas or with
keeping a consistent message in a larger company. This is a little
different than suggestion #1 because I'm suggesting here that you
totally farm out sections of the site to responsible departments. YMMV.
In the past, I've split up responsibility for the support pages, the
product information pages, and the "about the company" pages among
Operations, Marketing, and HR, respectively.

Sylvia asked about any procedures that are "written in stone". I try to
keep things flexible but, that said: I do require that we use the email
list internally for any changes to the site. If someone requests a
change in-person, I send the request to the list and CC the individual.
This helps me track the project (from request to completion), make sure
I get the job done,...you get the idea.

Something I haven't done, but I hear is useful is to use a content
manageent tool such as Zope. Supposedly this helps with web site
updates. Can't comment to ease-of-use, though.

Good luck! Please don't hesitate to ask if you have more questions.

Meg

-- 

Megan Golding (mgolding -at- secureworks -dot- net)
SecureWorks, Inc.

Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition.
	-- Timothy Leary


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