Tools for Maintaining Your Web Site

When I’m handing over a new site for a client to do their own updates, one question I usually get is about what kind of tools they’ll need in on order to maintain their site. In many cases, most people already have what they need and only need to pick up a piece of hardware, or a software program they don’t have already. But here is my complete list of basic tools that you would need to maintain your web site.

Computer- I get a lot of questions about what kind of computer to use for maintaining a web site. The computer that you use for maintenance tasks don’t have to be a powerful top-of-the line piece of equipment. Don’t get sucked into the whole this has X amount of RAM, and this has this many gigs on it’s hard drive. That stuff can be important if you are doing tasks that require a lot of power and a lot of storage. Editing video and music are an example. Dealing with very high resolution images for professional printing and publishing or computing large amounts of scientific data are two other examples. Unless you are planning on doing these things on the side…don’t sweat too much about the specs and horsepower of your computer. Any computer you get today is more than capable of handling basic web maintenance tasks. The critical thing is to make sure that you can log on to the Internet, which even the most basic computer out today can handle.

Some clients ask also if they should get a PC or a Mac. Everyone has their own preference, their own opinions and their own prejudices about either system. Bottom line….either one will get the job done. You’ll need to decide depending on what you’re comfortable with and your budget. There’s only a couple instances in which I will recommend one system over the other:

1. If you are planning to also do graphic design for print or an extensive amount of video editing…Mac systems have a slight edge over PC as far as ease of use and available tools.

2. If there is a piece of software that you must absolutely have…go with the system that it runs on.

Otherwise…go for what you like!

Scanner and/or Digital Camera- You never know when you might want to take a candid picture of your studio for your web site, or a picture of your new booth for your blog. The benefit of a digital camera is that you can shoot your pictures and you don’t have to first get them developed and then scan in order to get them on your site. I find my digital camera quite handy for take pictures for my blog. In addition, you might consider getting a scanner as well. I’ve had my scanner for quite some time and I use it for making quick scans of my work for documentation purposes, for scanning photos and slides of my work, and for scanning magazine clippings about me or my jewelry to put on my web site. You can get a perfectly decent scanner for as little as $50.

Internet connection- If you’re doing work on the Internet, you obviously need an Internet connection. While you’re perfectly capable of maintaining your site using a dial-up connection, it’s far more productive and efficient to use a high-speed connection such as through a cable modem or a DSL line. Any difference in price is more than paid for by the amount of time you save in waiting for a slow connection.

Web Page Editor- One of the most important pieces of software you’ll need to maintain your web sites is a web page editor. If you’re not really familiar with HTML, a WYSIWYG editor (short for “What You See Is What You Get”) would be your best bet. Most of these programs work very similarly to word processing program or like a page layout program, automatically writing the HTML for your page as your type and drag and drop text and pictures on your page. Some popular ones include Dreamweaver, FrontPage (currently discontinued but you can get an old copy), Microsoft’s FrontPage replacement, Expression Web, GoLive, and the Mac-based iWeb.

Graphics Editor- Even if you buy a template for your web site or if you have a web designer creating the graphics for your web site, you will still have a use for a graphics editor program to make minor edits to photo images or other graphic images like cropping, change the image size, altering the contrast and brightness…even getting rid of red-eye. The industry standard graphic program is of course Photoshop…and at $650 a pop, it also comes at an industry standard price. Plus, if you’re new to using a graphics editor, Photoshop may have quite a steep learning curve for you. Some alternatives to using Photoshop is Photoshop Elements, a greatly simplified and at $99, less expensive version of Photoshop. Other alternatives includes Corel Paint Shop Pro, the Mac-based iPhoto, and if you’re feeling particularly adventurous, GIMP and GIMPshop, which are free open-source graphic editors. The only problem with using GIMP or GIMPshop is that they may be a bit difficult to install and work with. But if you’re game, you can get a perfectly good graphics editor for free! Also, if you had recently purchased a digital camera, it may also have some very basic photo editing software that came with the camera. Check out any CD-ROM or disk that came along with your camera.

There are also some online graphic editors available that have many of the same capabilities as many of the popular graphic editor programs. While I wouldn’t depend on using a web-based graphic editor long-term (they are only good if you’re connected to the Internet), they are good to use in a pinch. They include:

• Fauxto (pronounced Photo)
• Picnik
• Picture2Life

E-mail Client- By now, just about anyone who’s connected to the web also has an e-mail program or client. An e-mail client is important for sending and receiving e-mail that you’ll get from your web site. A good e-mail client needs to have the ability catch spam, check e-mail from a variety of different e-mail accounts, spellcheck, the ability to filter e-mail and store email addresses. There’s basically two different types of e-mail clients, desktop based or web-based. A desktop based client is an e-mail program that lives on your local computer. Outlook, Eudora, Entourage, and Apple Mail are examples of these. A web-based client are e-mail clients that live only on the web, such as Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, and Gmail. The advantage of a desktop based client is that you can download your e-mail and then read it and write it when you’re offline. The advantage of a web-based client is that you’re able to check your e-mail at any computer that’s connected to the Internet.

An ideal solution is to have both a desktop-based e-mail client in order to received, store and back up e-mails and to open a web-based account (most are free) so that you can check your e-mail if you’re traveling without your computer.

Web browser- All computers come equipped with a web browser…most often it’s Internet Explorer. But while Internet Explorer is the most popular browser on the internet…it’s by no means the only one. Firefox is the second most popular browser currently used on the Internet and it’s gaining in popularity. A quick statistics check of my blog today showed me that 27% of my visitors were using Firefox. And there are a bunch of others, Safari, Camino, Opera, and Mozilla just to name a few. If you are going to be maintaining your web site, you should be able to see what your web site looks like to your visitors whether they are using Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, or Mozilla. The majority of these alternative browsers are free to download and use. So download and install some of these browsers on your computer and make it a regular habit to look at your web site on a different browsers.

FTP software- FTP stands for “File Transfer Protocol”. It’s basically a way to transfer files from one computer to another. When you’re making changes to your web site on your local computer, you’ll need an easy way to transfer those changes from your computer to your web host…and one of the easiest ways is through using a FTP software. Most web hosts will allow you to make changes to your web pages and to upload new pages and images through the cPanel on your web browser. Most web page editors like Dreamweaver and FrontPage already has an FTP program built into the program, which is how you are able to make changes in the web page editor and then make those changes live on you web site.

So why would you need separate FTP software if your web page editor or your web host’s cPanel can already handle it? While you can use your web host’s cPanel to transfer files from your computer to your web site, it’s not very efficient and there’s usually a limit as to how big your files can be, how many you can upload at a time, and what kind of files you can transfer…some web hosts only allow you to transfer HTML pages and graphic files using the cPanel. With a FTP program you can upload as many individual files and folders as you want at a time, and there is no size limit, you can transfer any type of file you want, and it’s often faster than using your web browser. If in the future you want to try your hand at installing scripts or special software on your web server…having an FTP program is a necessity. Popular FTP programs include WS_FTP, FlashFXP, CuteFTP, and Captain FTP. Most FTP programs are fairly inexpensive…no more than $55…even less in most cases.

Text Editor- If you’ve read my past posts on preventing garbled text in your web pages and emails, you already know one reason why a good text editor is valuable to maintaining your web site. A text editor is a program that allows you to type documents in plain text…without any formatting or special characters. If you want to be able to open up an individual HTML page and look at the code underneath, you’ll need a text editor in order to see it properly.

Since most people already have a computer, the biggest expense is usually in the software arena…especially the graphic editing software. If you need to start looking for software to help maintain your site, check out an earlier post on finding software on the cheap.

Got a favorite tool that I’ve missed? Leave a comment and tell me about it!