Determine who's responsible for your Web Presence

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Determine who's responsible for your Web Presence

Technical Responsibility and Content Responsibility - who has it?

Technical Responsibility

If you rent Web Server space or buy your own Web Server, who do you expect to run, maintain and fix the site if anything goes wrong? Your answer must depend on how long you can stand having your Web Presence missing from the World Wide Web due to hardware failures.

If you rent space on a shared public Web Server from a local or national Internet Service Provider, expect the Provider to take care of the installed Web site on your behalf. That's what you're paying them to do.

Be sure to ask:

How often is the ISP's system/server down?
Can the ISP provide an availability history for their servers?
If the system needs to be repaired, is there a spare or mirror server that continues to run your Web site while that server is repaired?
How often is your Web site backed up?

If you own your own Web Server, you can plan to take care of it yourself or try to contract out the service to a third party. Some Internet Service Providers will allow you to install your own machines in their place of business. If you take care of your own Web Server, be sure to establish or consider:

A regular backup plan for your Server
A disaster recovery plan for your Server
A beefed-up Server with RAID - redundant array of inexpensive disks. This server hardware can tolerate hard drive failures up to a point.
Possibly more than one Server - a mirror or duplicate server to take over if the on-line Server fails. This can tide you over while it's repaired.

Content Responsibility

Who will gather content and graphics for your Web site, design and layout the navigation of the Web site, and ultimately install the Web site per your chosen Web Server strategy?

You can do it yourself or you can hire someone to do it for you.

If you do it yourself, you'll need:

A working knowledge of HTML
HTML editor
HTML Web Browsers (more than one - to really test things)
Possibly a Digital Camera for direct photo-to-Web Page work
Possibly an Image/Photo scanner
Image Processing Software - Adobe Photoshop, for example
Possibly a stand-alone Web Server to install and test the site on
A working knowledge of File Transfer Protocol (FTP) and UNIX
to transfer and set up the Web Site on an ISP Web Server.
Most important, you'll need TIME!

If you hire someone else to do it for you, expect them to have everything listed above and the TIME to get it done within the schedule you need!