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Site Maintenance ]

As mentioned in the last section you should give some consideration to maintenance of your site during graphic design. This is probably a bit undestated. You should give consideration to maintenance during every phase of your implementation, and looking back you'll see that the prospect of living with your decisions probably affected those decisions in earlier sections.

For example, development of the site map, and organization of the content away from ever-changing calendar or 'special' events reduces the cost of future changes. The choices for navigation and the way your content is linked wil influence the size of the headache you get when you try to include a new category of information.

Some considerations:

• Image maps used for navigation are not only a bit slow to load, they can require alot of time to update if the site content changes.
• Critically spaced text (using tables, frames or spacer graphics) is not easily modified. Even the correction of a spelling mistake could bump your text up or down a line and thus require overhaul of the placement or further editing of the text.
• Frames can ease (or complicate) maintenance dpending on the site and the way they're used. More on this in the article On Frames.
• There is a cardinal rule about moving content: DON'T. If a file exists at a given location, then there always needs be a file at that location. Search engine indexes are old (sometimes 6 to 12 months out of date if they even manage to re-index you) and a visitor who receives a 404 - File Not Found message will probably sprain a finger trying to reach the back button. At worst, replace an obsolete file with one containing an explanation of its removal and with pointers to proper existing locations. This emphasizes the importance of properly organizing and structuring your content (see the Content section of this guide).

Which brings us to the end of the on-line guide.

Use the links to return to other sections of the guide or return to the main web builder page.