Let us say that you had the perfect website designed for you. It is beautiful and has everything you need. Well, after a while, you decide to change your inventory. Now you want to update your online inventory and change your online FAQ page. Are you going to have to spend more money to have the web designer come back and do this for you, or are you going to risk your site by going into the code yourself? Fortunately there is a third option. Have your site designed with areas that can be edited by the website owner… that’s you.
You may still want to have your web designer come back and do maintenance on your site, but you do not want to have to call your designer every time you want to add copy or edit your contacts page.
Here is a site that allows the owner to edit some important information on the site easily. Stock.Netlumination is a site that displays some of my photos. The potential buyer will enter the site through the home page. When I want to change information about photos, or add photos, I go to this, the editing page.
Normally this page would be password protected, but I left it accessible to the public, so I can demonstrate its features. If you click on a photo in the editing mode, you are taken to a page where you can modify the information without having to deal with any messy XHTML code. For example, here is a page that would allow me to edit information about one of my photos of Mount Hood, simply by changing the prefilled form and entering the correct password. Once I hit submit, the site will automatically generate the necessary code, and it will update to display the new information.
Having pages like this will enable you to have better and more direct control over your site. It will allow your web developer to concentrate on maintaining the accessibility, look, and feel of the siste, while allowing you to control its content.
As you design your web page with you web developer, make sure you spend some time thinking about what parts of your site you will want to be able to easily edit yourself.
Tags: ease of use, editing, search engine optimization, site maintenance, upkeep
