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Managing content

Because Web documents are part of the public face of an organization it is very important to keep them consistent with each other and up to date. It can be useful to initiate a procedure whereby an organization's Web pages are reviewed at regular intervals and checked for continuing accuracy and adherence to house style. Some sites use version control software as a tool for keeping track of changes to documents.

In some organizations individual authors are responsible for the continuing accuracy of documents they have written. This has been known to cause problems when people leave. Other organizations appoint editors who are responsible for the Web coverage of specific areas, setting in place appropriate review procedures.

Bear in mind that many people using the Web are connected over slow serial lines with limited bandwidth. Superfluous or irrelevant images, especially if large, may cause your readers severe irritation, so only include them if they are really necessary. Use a text-mode browser or disable image-loading when previewing your own documents to see whether they still make sense without the images. At least be aware that by including images in documents, you are excluding some potential readers.

The Web is only useful while people continue to read material published on it. If the general quality of material published is widely perceived to be poor, interest will wane, to everyone's detriment. As information providers we have a collective responsibility for the quality control of the material we publish. The Web lets you publish documents instantly. Proofread and spell-check your documents as an absolute minimum and perhaps get others to review them as well. If all else fails, reading documents aloud to yourself slowly and carefully can be an effective way of bringing errors to light. Readers will notice your mistikes!

There are tools available to validate the HTML syntax of documents. If you have access to them, use them. A selection is listed in the Resource Guide at the end of the book.

Most Web servers log all browser requests received. This provides the opportunity to monitor the readership of your documents. Programs are available to analyse the log files and present the information in a useful form and are easy to write or modify if you need custom information. You can of course gain useful information by looking directly at the log file, if you have access to it. It is as useful to find out which documents do not get requested as to find out which ones do.

Spinning the Web by Andrew Ford
© 1995 International Thomson Publishing
© 2002 Andrew Ford and Ford & Mason Ltd
Note: this HTML document was generated in December 1994 directly from the LaTeX source files using LaTeX2HTML. It was formatted into our standard page layout using the Template Toolkit. The document is mainly of historical interest as obviously many of the sites mentioned have long since disappeared.