Long Term Maintenance

I mentioned in the previous chapter that site design tends to get outdated in the same way clothing

does. What is less obvious, but just as important for site function, is that CODING gets outdated, much

the same way computer hardware or electronics do.

Web pages are written in code – it is a language that tells the browser how to show the page. Roughly

translated, it is like a list of instructions: show this image here, put this text here (in this size, with this

font, in this color), put a box here and put this text inside it... etc.

When a visitor asks for a page, the server sends the page to the browser. The browser “reads” the page,

and follows the instructions.

The problem comes in because each year, new kinds of code instructions are written, and browsers are updated

to be able to read the new code. Sometimes when the new ones are written, it means that old ones have to be

eliminated, or the newer browsers interpret the older instructions differently.

So a page that looked fine one

day may suddenly look weird when the site visitor updates their browser (or when they get a new

computer).

Computers are changing too. Monitors are getting bigger.

Design for large monitors is distinctly different

than design for smaller ones – more complex, richer in content per page.

A site that was designed for a

small monitor will look funky in a big one – a little bitty box sitting in the middle of a great big screen – or worse, a

page that flexes, which gets stretched way out of shape on a large monitor!

Those changes are not ones that can be anticipated, so even good design requires maintaining and updating.

You can expect to have to have your site overhauled (with significant code changes), about once every 2-3

years. You can expect to have to rebuild from the ground, up, about once every 4-5 years. This is just part of

maintaining a site.

Other maintenance issues exist also

, because sometimes files get corrupted, sometimes download problems

occur, sometimes a shopping cart will develop a problem. Programming code is not 100% stable, and never will

be. Even with simple sites, sometimes things go weird, and someone has to go in and troubleshoot.

When you have dynamic features on your site (shopping carts, forums, Content Management

Systems, etc), then there are also security issues.

Some of them are annoyances, or things that will

just make a customer a little leary of using your site. Some of them are major things that can get your

site shut down if someone hacks into it and uses your site for illegal purposes.

Now, while there really is no need to stay up nights worrying about this, it IS something you need

to take seriously.

If you have that kind of site, it will need to have security updates run periodically, and

it will need to have the server software (which provides the framework for the site) updated now and

again. It is wise to check once a month for minor updates, and once every six months for major

upgrades.

If you use a form on your site, you will also want to have the code for it reconstructed every six

months or so. I highly recommend that you use a service to provide form processing for you, and

that you NOT use form code that is hosted on your own server

– this can be a huge security risk,

and can get your site shut down if someone uses the form in an illegal manner (when you use a service,

they keep the form more secure so this is not likely to happen). This is one way you can turn your

security headaches over for someone else to have to worry about!

Regular maintenance of a site helps you to insure that what you think you are delivering to your customers, and

what you actually ARE delivering, are one and the same. And it insures that your site will steadily grow, instead

of sitting there without progress.