Church webs made simple (2005)

Training presentation outline

Web site planning

Web page design

Web site maintenance

Webmaster resources

Church Technology Training (access to 2003-2006 session information)

Web Site Maintenance

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Getting your web files published to a web server is not the end.  Now you have to maintain the web. The only thing constant is change. New pages, web address that change, web sites that disappear, improvements in content or wording, ... the list goes on seemingly forever. Below are some web maintenance activities that you'll need to handle.

Page and Site cleanup

Some commonly cleanup activities:

  • Correct or delete bad (broken) links.

  • Link or delete unlinked files.

  • If you use a Site Map, make sure you keep it current. As you add or remove web pages, the site map will probably also change.

  • Look for coding missteps. Check the view in different browser.

  • Check Web pages for outdated information. Correct or delete as needed. Remove perishable information as soon as it is no longer needed.

  • Standardize file naming. Make folder structure logical and efficient. Rename and move files and needed.

  • Check navigation. Does it take more than three mouse clicks to get to some information? Can the path be shortened?

META tag cleanup

Always use META tags in the "HEAD" area.  They greatly increase the chance that a visitor search for your Web site will actually find it.  Key META tags are:

  • Title.  Add a descriptive "title" META tag as the top one under the "<HEAD>" area.  It's not only what shows in the Title bar of your web browser, it's also what many search engines key on and display in search results.

  • Keywords. Add words and phrases (separated by commas) that in some way describe that web page's content. For the index page of a Web site, go ahead and add words and phrases that pertain to the whole site.

  • Description. In 25 words or less, describe that web page.  Search engines may use the "Description" META tag when returning search results. So help the searchers.

Use search engines to see how effective your META tags and page text placement is in getting your pages moved up into the top 50 search returns.

Check out the web pages that are "ahead" of yours to see what they use for META tags

  1. Search for some terms that you think should bring up one of your web pages

  2. Open a web page that is "higher" in the returns list,

  3. RIGHT-click on the web page in your browser and then select "View source.

  4. Look in the "<HEAD" area for the META tags to see what that page uses.  Also remember that the first 50 - 100 words of text area very important in search returns also.  And that's the first 50 - 100 words that the search engine "sees" when it hits your page.  If you use a table, the search proceeds from upper left across, then down to the next row's left-most cell, then right (normal Western reading style). So left-column menu text gets read into that first slug of text.

Accessibility checking

  • Accessible colors. Check some of your Web pages to see if color-blind people can see everything OK. Use an online or downloadable color checker such as VisCheck.

  • Check ALT attributes. Make sure that every image has an ALT attribute, even if it's a blank one ("").

  • TITLE attributes.  If what you are after is a pop-up "tooltip" type text display when you hover over an image, use the TITLE meta tag in addition to the ALT pme.  ALT attributes are really intended for display of text inside the image area when images are turned off by the user.

  • A Table header tag is needed for any cell in a data table that heads a column.  Many GUI web page editors, including FrontPage, let you make this selection on the cell peoperties sheet.  In FrontPage, it's a check box.

Added accessibility measures require HTML code editing:

  • Add a "summary" attribute for tables that are used solely for layout purposes are are not true data tables.
    Example:

<table border="0" width="99%" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" height="100%" summary="This table is for layout only">

  • Add scope attributes for data tables column or row header cells. in addition to the TH (table header) code, the "scope" attribute shows whether the cell is the start of a column or a row. This is important for screen readers for the blind, for example.

 

This page is part of the 2005 district training for the
Atlanta-Emory and Atlanta-Decatur-Oxford districts,
North Georgia Conference of the United Methodist Church

Questions? Contact webmaster @ apmethodist.org (without the spaces)

This page was last edited 01/15/2006 12:24 AM