Web Site Administration Made Easy
By Patrick O'Hannigan
What This Is
This white paper assumes that you already know HTML, and by design or default you have
graduated from home page creation into Web site administration. Once bitten by administrative
tasks, your frame of reference changes from "what can I do with this new technology?" to "how do I
keep my site free of poisons like ambiguity, inefficiency, and mediocrity?"
If you're asking those questions, you've come to the right document.
What You Need
The prerequisites for Web site administration are a computer with an Internet connection, basic
word processing software, and the second-generation or better release of a graphical browser.
To be a Webmaster, your system should also include virus protection, an application with which to
manipulate images stored in graphical interchange format, and reliable backup software. Access to
or (even better) control of a Web server is the only other requirement.
Site management software is useful and timesaving, but only necessary when your site receives
frequent contributions from a lot of people, as more commonly happens with large Internet sites
than with Intranet sites.
Intranet vs. Internet
Because they are aimed at a more homogenous group of users and don't ordinarily have to make
as many allowances for language, time zone, browser, or modem differences, Intranet sites are
usually easier to manage than Internet sites. But the guidelines here work well on either side of the
firewall that divides the Intranet from the Internet.
Design Theory: the Big Six
While serving as Webmaster for an Intranet site at Symantec Corporation's Peter Norton Group,
Kurt Ament summarized the Webmaster's Code as follows:
1. "Grow or die." Survival is the first rule of any enterprise. Keep your site fresh and
customers will keep coming back for more.
2. "Don't forget your map." You lose customers by allowing them to get lost. Keep
navigation tools close at hand.
3. "Do more good than harm." Just because you can induce vertigo doesn't mean you
should. Your customers will thank you with repeat visits.
To Ament's eminently useful rules, you can safely add the following:
4. "Start small." Build a personal home page before administering a site to which many
people contribute. Move off the planning page and on to the Web before you decide to
fill another white board.
5. "Think metaphorically." Apart from being existentially correct, a polite nod to reality on
what some people call "the other side of the screen" pays dividends in terms of
increased user satisfaction with your interface. And one definition of "genius" is the
ability to see relationships where no relationships are presumed to exist.
6. "Learn from existing Web sites." What else do you think your browser's "View
Source" and "Bookmark" options are for?
At a bumper-sticker summation level, good Webmasters promote Growth, Access, Hospitality,
Efficiency, Organization, and Utility on their sites (Note the exact correspondence between these
virtues and the rules that make them possible).
Design Practice: Implementing the Big Six
Growth: To create the expectation of growth that piques curiosity and ensures return visits to the
site, some Webmasters e-mail periodic bulletins about changes on their sites to the people for
whom those sites are designed, or a subset of users that subscribes to the bulletin. Such bulletins
can later be placed into searchable hypertext archives.
Access: Well-designed access lets your users find information quickly. What people want from your
Web site should be easy to find, not hidden in the nether regions of the interface. Navigational tools,
links, and labels are not optional. Better to err on the side of redundancy than to put too much faith
in a browser's "Back" button.
Hospitality: Web sites worthy of return visits exercise restraint. That means:
1. Do not add sound, video, VRML, or animation to a Web site just because you can.
2. Avoid intrusive color schemes.
3. Acknowledge copyrights and source material that you get from others.
4. Keep pages to a reasonable size.
5. Link to other sites.
Even experienced Webmasters sometimes fall prey to the self-indulgent antithesis of hospitality.
One well-known typography guru currently includes an animated self-portrait on his home page. This
effect is clever, but distracting.
Efficiency: Efficiency is the other side of the Access coin, and it serves you rather than your users.
Your Web site should be structured so that you can maintain it easily. No matter what operating
system you use for Web site development, the following strategies can save you valuable time:
1. Group images in their own directory or folder whenever possible.
2. Establish a naming convention that differentiates between banner, background, or
navigational images and more conventional illustrations.
3. Assign topics for which significant expansion is planned to their own directories.
4. Use generic names like "default.html" or "index.html" for primary (top-level) pages.
5. Use specific, obvious names for secondary pages.
6. Maintain a separate "staging area" for testing new pages and HTML formats.
7. If you don't have change management software, at least devise and publicize file
naming conventions that indicate when HTML source files are locked.
8. Maintain a hypertext log of changes to your site.
Organization: Data on a Web site should be "bucketed" appropriately. In addition to providing a
hypertext Table of Contents or Index, one of the best things you can do for your users is to build your
site around a controlling metaphor. The impressively credentialed Cyborganic Web site for
instance, carries its garden metaphor three levels deep. Subdirectories in the Cyborganic Gardens
are labeled with names like "the hothouse," "the orchard," and "the shed."
Obviously, not all implementations of a controlling metaphor are (or need to be) as elaborate as
Cyborganic's. But even a simple metaphor can work with page text, backgrounds, URL addresses,
and recurring design elements to ensure that users always know where they are on a site, and (just
as importantly), what they can expect to find there. Metaphors are useful precisely to the extent that
they evoke an identifiable set of visual clues in most people's minds.
Utility: A Web site should serve a purpose. As a Webmaster, you should understand the audience
for your Web site, and periodically re-evalulate what they want, need, or could use from that site.
Technical publications groups, for instance, appreciate document downloading mechanisms, and
online access to documentation style guides. Developer groups may benefit from one-click access
to current functional specifications.
Well-organized groups have Web content research done by marketing specialists or hands-on
managers, but whether you benefit from a support structure or are forced to do analysis yourself,
this kind of research contributes immeasurably to the longevity and usefulness of a Web site.
Conclusion
Web site administration can be a rewarding addition to a career, or a burdensome backwater
lacking advancement potential. As more people learn HTML and self- publishing gets ever easier,
the need for competent Web site administration becomes glaringly apparent throughout
cyberspace. By following the principles outlined in this document, you can increase both your users'
satisfaction and your own.
Disclaimer
Except where otherwise noted, the opinions expressed in this document are solely my own.
Copyright 1996 Seagate Software, Inc.
The Cyborganic Corporation and Cyborganic Gardens are trademarks of Cyborganic Corporation.
About the author:
Patrick O'Hannigan is Webmaster for a Technical Publications Intranet site at Seagate Software Storage Management Group, where he also works as a writer and editor. Before joining Seagate Software, Patrick held positions with publications groups at Symantec corporation and Xerox corporation. Seagate Software develops tools and applications in the area of data management, including information management, reporting, network and systems management, and storage management.
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