Government of Canada Internet Guide

Web Site Maintenance

This section focuses on the maintenance of your Web site.

You must keep abreast of new information, new links and your clients' needs when maintaining a Web site. Your clients can help you maintain your site by telling you about technical and non-technical problems with it.

General Considerations
Considering maintenance as an integral part of Web site development, and updating your Web site

Content
Maintaining existing content, new content, old content and reference content

Hyperlinks
Ensuring that hyperlinks on your Web site still work

Interactivity Tool Maintenance
Maintaining tools such as chat rooms, newsgroups and e-commerce sites

General Considerations

This section discusses the nature of on-line publishing and basic activities you should consider when updating your Web site.

Publishing a Web site is not a one-shot project, because the medium is interactive. Continuous improvement is not only possible, but expected. As a Web publisher, you must keep on top of fresh information, new Web sites you can link to, data on usage patterns and client preferences, and direct client feedback. Static, outdated information quickly turns people off your Web page and could create a bad impression of your institution.

The minute you put something on the Web, you must be prepared to update it, regularly, and to check the links to make sure they are still current and useful. Web site addresses change frequently, and information can quickly go out of date. When maintaining your site, you should do the following.

• Consider periodic client surveys about your site, which you can use to assess clients' views on the accuracy, reliability, accessibility, ease-of-use and content quality of your site, and to get ideas for improvements.
• Ensure your service or information is relevant by building in client feedback mechanisms (for instance, you can provide your e-mail address and invite comments).
• Analyze usage logs, which your Web master can provide. For example, identify what percentage of the hits on your page come from other government sites or external sources, or from specific regions or organizations; determine how long visitors stay on your page.
• Monitor Internet user and discussion groups pertinent to your institution's business lines.
• Monitor coverage of your institution's Web site in major print and electronic media.

Content

This section discusses ways to maintain the content on your Web site. Content includes everything on the site that is delivered to your clients' browsers, as well as all the software processes that directly or indirectly support that delivery.

Content that reflects your clients' perspectives, priorities and concerns should be the primary focus of your site. Content comes in the form of news, facts, organizational charts, illustrations, photos, transactions and anything else that communicates something useful to someone.

This section is divided in four parts:

Adding New Content
Considering issues before adding new content to your Web site

Updating Existing Content
Considering issues before changing content on your Web site

Archiving Content
Evaluating, integrating or removing content

Developing Common "Reference" Content
Developing and maintaining reference content sections, such as What's New, Help and FAQ sections

Adding New Content

• Consider the following questions before adding new content to a Web site.
• Are there institutional or government-wide policies that affect the content?
• Is there a client group that needs your information?
• Does the content add value to the site and support your institutional priorities?
• Is the information accurate, readable, reliable, up-to-date, complete and credible?
• Should you do more subject-matter research, client analysis and expert analysis before placing the content on the Web site?
• Can you link the information to another Web site, such as another reliable institutional site?
• Is the content written for the Web? (See Writing for the Web.)
• Can the content be displayed in HTML format?
• Is the content written with a clear purpose that a client could quickly discern?
• Do you clearly understand how this content will effectively fit into the existing Web site architecture?

Updating Existing Content

As soon as you place content on your Web site, you must be prepared to regularly update and maintain it. You should regularly review and re-read the content on your Web site.

Consider the following questions before updating the content on your Web site.

• Is the information accurate, reliable, complete, credible and useful to your clients?
• How much time and money can you devote to keeping the content current and useful?
• What information needs to be updated at a certain time?
• Are there measures to ensure regular updates and ongoing improvements?
• Do you have procedures for updating content to reflect client feedback or usage log statistics?
• Can you link this content to another Web site, such as another reliable institutional site?
• How will you measure the success of your new content (through number of hits or site statistics, for example)?
• Do you have a back-up plan for updating the content? For instance, will someone update the content if you are ill or on holiday?
• How often will you update the content?

Archiving Content

This section provides guidance on archiving content while considering its relevance and accuracy.

If content is at all useful to your clients, consider keeping it on your site. Modify your Web site so that clients can find old content quickly through links. This may help your site develop a reputation as a substantial on-line service of record.

Clients can benefit from old content because it

• may have historical interest (for instance, statistical reviews from previous years);
• provides background information and a richer texture for your Web site; and
• may be intrinsically interesting and worth reading even if it is not new (for instance, a well-written essay or previous news releases).

Integrate content by doing the following:

• linking new articles to archived content, since people reading new content may want the background context that old content provides;
• maintaining current links in archived files, and deleting or replacing outdated links;
• putting links to recent information on older pages, so that clients can find out about recent developments; and
• removing obsolete or misleading content and replacing it with current data or links.

Downplay Archived Content in Search Listings

Unless you take steps to increase the priority of new content, pointers to archived content may begin to dominate search results after a few years. The simplest solution is to have the search engine give a lower weight to older pages. The weight should be computed relative to the creation date and not to the latest modification date. The latter will often be very recent, if you have properly maintained the older content.

Removing Content Pages

Before removing content pages, remember the following.

• Other sites may link to that page, so removing it will cause a broken link and result in lost opportunities as you turn away clients.
• Clients may have bookmarked the page because they want to go directly to a relevant part of your site instead of starting at the home page every time.
• Search engines update their databases slowly, so they will lead clients astray if you remove pages.

Developing Common "Reference" Content

This section examines common reference content. Reference content is additional content created separately from a site's primary information and services.

What's New

You should update the What's New section regularly with information of interest to your clients. Maintaining this content is crucial, as some on-line clients may go to this section first and never come back if the information is outdated.

Date each entry in the What's New section so clients can gauge the information's relevance and accuracy. Also, decide how long an entry will stay in the "What's New" section. Is it really "new" if it is dated three months ago?

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

The FAQs section should contain real questions with detailed answers. It should give your clients adequate guidance and not leave them confused. When maintaining this section, try not to add every question you receive from your clients, because then it becomes hard for clients to find the appropriate FAQ (focus on the "frequently" aspect of "frequently asked questions").

If possible, group FAQs in categories to help clients find the right question. Consider setting up a search engine for your FAQs.

Calendar

The Calendar section lists important institutional events and dates that may interest your clients. By updating this section regularly, you can foster clients' interest in your institution.

Verify the accuracy and relevance of posted information. Provide a coordinator's name, phone number and address for each event, so that clients can get more information if they are interested.

Site Map

The Site Map section provides a visual representation of your site. Clients may initially find this the quickest method of finding certain information and services. Site maps are particularly useful for large sites, where clients may know what they're looking for but be unable to find it.

Update this section when you add major sections to your Web site.

Help

The Help section can contain the following:

• FAQs (frequently asked questions);
• tips on searching for information or navigating the site;
• site maps;
• a list of acronyms used on the site;
• a glossary;
• a bibliography;
• site specifications (such as type of content available and accessibility information); and
• other helpful information.

Update sections such as the glossary, bibliography and acronyms when you add content to your Web site.

For an example of a help section, see www.tbs-sct.gc.ca/cioscripts/help/help-aide_e.asp?who=/cio-dpi/.

Contact Information

The Contact Information section, sometimes called the Contact Us section, should provide the postal address, e-mail address, telephone and fax numbers, and other directory information of those in charge of the technical and non-technical aspects of your Web site. Update this section whenever responsibilities change - for instance, whenever a new Web master takes over.

Hyperlinks

This section helps you maintain hyperlinks, which are a reference from some point in one document to some point in another document. This is an external link. Hyperlinks can also link two places in the same document. This is an internal link. The Web is a linking medium: hypertext ties it together and allows clients to discover new and useful information.

Examining Existing Hyperlinks

While reviewing content or a section devoted to links (for example, a page of "related sites") consider the following.

• Is the hyperlink broken (meaning that the referring page or section no longer exists)?
• Is the hyperlink linking to the right text?
• Is the external link irrelevant or outdated, as far as you or your clients are concerned?
• Should the location of the hyperlink change to fit better in the overall context of the page? For example, should the hyperlink be moved to a more logical place?
• Is the text of the hyperlink meaningful, or does it say something like, "Go to the next page" or "click here"?
• Is there enough context for the clients to know where they will go if they will follow the hyperlink?
• Do image hyperlinks provide appropriate and meaningful alt-text?

Adding New Hyperlinks

When adding hyperlinks, whether they connect places within or between documents, consider the following.

• Is it necessary to add the external link because, for example, it will help your clients?
• Can you provide a detailed context for the link within your content?
• Can you trust the Web master of the external link? Will the Web master update the site regularly and notify you of a change to the URL?
• Are there any institutional links that can replace existing content from your Web site?
• Are there logical places to which you should have internal hyperlinks?
• Does the link improve navigation within the document?

Consider putting an "Additional Resources" section at the end of a section or document, or as a separate section, which would include hyperlinks to well-explained sources of information.

Hyperlink Validator

Follow http://validator.w3.org/checklink to verify whether links on a page are broken. Note that this site is not subject to the Official Languages Act. The material found there is therefore in the language(s) used by the site in question.

InteractivityTool Maintenance

This section helps maintain such interactivity tools as chat rooms, newsgroups and bulletin boards. Regular maintenance will not only keep the site running, but will ensure that they are being used properly. Always maintain client privacy and security. For example, those in charge of maintaining the interactivity tools should be aware of viruses that might inadvertently pass from a client computer to the network.

When keeping records, maintain a log file detailing the use of interactivity tools and of any technical issues that arise.

Chat Rooms

Monitor chat rooms to set the channel topic and remove abusive people. Establish ground rules at the front end and see that they are respected. To maintain order, chat room network operators should be able to perform basic network tasks, such as disconnecting and reconnecting servers. They should also be able to remove a client from the connected network by force, meaning that they can close the connection between any client and server.

Newsgroups (Discussion Forums)

Newsgroups also require maintenance. A moderator should read all messages before allowing them to be posted on the newsgroup. This way, the moderator can keep spam and other inappropriate content, such as bulk e-mail, out of the discussion. Moderating introduces delays - messages aren't posted as soon as they're submitted but sit in a queue until the moderator has a chance to read and approve them.

You can set up your discussion forum system to ask for a client logon before letting someone post a message. Everyone should be free to read posted material, but actually submitting a message should require registration. That way, if someone posts annoying spam, you can simply lock him or her out of the forum. If they keep reregistering to regain access, you may then have to block registration from that particular e-mail address.