Hello Brian!
Thank you for this invitation:
>I've been asked to give a seminar which will address web management
>issues. I'd be interested in the views of web managers on
>"What are the main problems facing Web managers?". Can we come up with a
>list of the top 10 challenges facing web managers.
* Having recently attended John MacCulloch's (UKERNA) Webmasters course I'm
bound to say that the most important thing is to have a *Web Strategy*, so
that you know what you're trying to achieve with a Web site and know how
you will measure the extent to which you have achieved it.
* An 'Editorial Board' helps to spread the load, responsibility, and
acceptance of the Strategy (but mustn't be allowed to turn a horse into a
camel).
* The content must be 'right', and up-to-date, which in a large
organisation means having enough people working on it -- either as a group
or through distributed publishing, and if the latter, it's crucial that the
whole organisation supports the Web initiative.
* As well as the content being good, people have to be able to find it
easily, meaning that the information must be structured intuitively.
* I'd like to do some kind of user-testing, and 'marketing' the use of our
Web site through user-networks, but haven't got anywhere with that yet.
* The technical side of things is changing horrendously quickly, and I'm
lucky that I can leave most of the issues to technical colleagues, but it
would be nice to know that one was keeping up with all the important
developments in browsers, servers, HTML and site management utilities.
* Utilities can tell you when links are broken or pages are getting old,
but you also need to have some idea of how important it is to maintain old
pages: it's not sensible to spend a lot of time keeping 'old' information
relevant and linked in if no one is looking at it.
* At the moment I'm doing little more than using common sense about issues
which might have legal implications -- things like copyright ('ours' and
'theirs'), libel, defamation etc, and it would be helpful if there could be
a single national set of guidelines for these.
I look forward to seeing your final 'top ten' challenges: will you be
bringing your seminar on tour around the country?!
Best wishes,
Nick Stroud.
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Nick Stroud, Computing Services, University of Edinburgh,
Main Library, George Square, Edinburgh EH8 9LJ
[log in to unmask] 0131 650 3345 (fax 0131 650 6547)
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