Guide to Web Site Management

Empower yourself with open source and free web site management solutions

By Aileen Harris, Publisher, BroadcastAtlanta.com

1. Flexibility. With a web site content management tool, you can update your web content without affecting the website design or navigation since the content is stored in a database. Update your site from anywhere—your home, your office or on your laptop since most web site content management tools simply call for you to log in to your website from a browser to make updates.
2. User-friendliness. Web site maintenance is now almost as easy as creating a text document on your computer. Website content management software enables employees across your organization—even your website visitors—to contribute to your website content. A website content management tool allows you to assign administrative permissions to contributors so you control the level of user contribution and editing.
3. Speed. Content modules like pictures, news and polls enable you to easily and swiftly add as well as categorize content. You can also pre-schedule content publication.
   

Action Steps
The best contacts and resources to help you get it done

Choose a web-hosting package that has web site maintenance services

When shopping for a web-hosting package, select a host that provides a readily-accessible support team. Also consider price, server space as well as website building and updating tools before selecting a package.

I recommend: Try Yahoo for Small Business and InMotion. Both offer business class web hosting packages.

Use open source software for web site content management

There are a number of web site management software providers that allow the non-developer to create and manage a robust website.

I recommend: Open Source CMS provides demos to a wide array of open source software providers like Joomla! and CMS Made Simple. Learn how to install website content management solutions with Siteground. This site provides links to several web tutorials for popular open source CMS providers like Joomla!, Wordpress and Drupal.

Track your website's performance with free web reporting tools

Once you build your website, ensure that it is designed to attract visitors. There are many free tools that can assist you in website management and allow you to measure your website's search engine optimization strength, traffic and links on other sites.

I recommend: Seomoz helps you find how important, visible and popular the web considers your site. Just enter a URL to get data results. Market Vertical Partners provides information like your site’s number of indexed pages in major search engines and number of inbound links. W3C checks your websites for any broken links. Recip Links allows you to review your reciprocal links with other websites. Selfseo measures how fast your website loads, an important website management statistic since you can lose a number of visitors if your website loads slow. Awstats is web site management software that will give you comprehensive information about your website traffic. Try the Awstats demo to see specific information the software generates.

Helpful advice for making the most of this Guide

• •  If you use open source software to build a web site or for web site content management, be sure to visit the software's community forums to find answers to software problems and connect with developers.