Managing Your Site
Once you have all your pages uploaded to your site (and don't forget any necessary images!) you will have to start thinking about managing your site.
Keeping the Site Up-to-Date
It's annoying to have spent ages searching for a site, eventually connecting to it, and then finding that the information given on it is completely out-of-date. That's no way to attract visitors back to your pages! Review the information given on your site at frequent intervals. Set up a separate folder on your computer, and when pages need updating, copy the amended page to this new folder. In this way, you will always know which pages need to be uploaded. When you have uploaded them, delete them from the special folder.
Checking the pages
When you first uploaded the pages to your site you should have done a thorough on-line check to make sure that they actually work. It's quite possible for it to appear to work perfectly while the pages are sitting on your computer and then fail to work once uploaded. This can often be due to forgetting that your service provider is probably hosting your pages on a computer running the UNIX operating system, and UNIX is "case-sensitive" (in other words it treats a file called MyFile.html as being a different file to one called myfile.html) whereas your own computer (if you're using Windows) isn't.Don't just check the pages when you first upload them and then forget them. Things can still happen that may stop them working. A service provider once changed the URL of my pages without telling me and the site could have been unobtainable from then on if I hadn't spotted it!
External Links
If you're using links to pages outside your site they should also be checked regularly. The internet is constantly changing, and pages appear and disappear quite quickly. If a link stops working try and find out what the new URL is and alter it; otherwise, remove the offending link. If you have a page with a lot of external links you could consider using a (free) service such as the Web Site Garage.
It All Takes Time!
If you want your web site to be successful you must recognise that you will need to spend time on it. Presumably you find some pleasure in creating your site (if not, why are you doing it?!) so set aside enough time each week/month to make sure that your pages stay up-to-date. That way you can continue to enjoy the fact that people from all over the world are coming to look at your site.
This page hosted by
Get your own
Free Home Page
Last major revision: 22 August 1998 at 02:29 BST
This page URL: https://members.tripod.com/~terry_franks/website6.html
is a member of
