There's more to building a website than simply throwing together some pages. Here we discuss some of the points you ought to consider when planning and managing your site.

By far the majority of requests for volunteer assistance we receive are related to website development. Some of our charities want to develop a website from scratch, others want to add new features to an existing site or to change the look and feel of their site. Others are looking to embrace the latest generation of web technologies - for example podcasts, blogs and social networking.

Over the past few years use of the internet has grown exponentially. Everyone seems to have their own site now so naturally even the smallest charity or community group wants one. And the guy down the road and your 13 year-old nephew have both built their own sites so it must be easy. Right?

Unfortunately not. Yes, there are tools available that make creating a small website quite straightforward. And if you've a flair for design you can put together something that looks very professional in a short space of time. But your site needs to be maintained. Do you have time to do that? If someone else writes content do they know how to add it to the site?

In short, there are lots of management issues surrounding your website. In this article we mention some of those issues and point you to some sources of further information.

Planning your website

You've decided that you want a website and you're excited about it. You want to see the results now and you want to start telling everyone the address of your new site. But like all IT projects a bit of forward planning can avoid problems further down the line.

Why do you want a site? Do you want to provide information to people who already know about your organisation? Or attract people who've never heard of you?

Do you simply want to advertise your contact details so people can call for more information? Or do you want to include all the information on the site so that people don't need to ring you? Do you want to sell online? Or allow people to book events?

How much can you afford to spend on developing the site? And maintaining it? Do you need to pay a professional developer or can you work with a volunteer? As you know, iT4Communities can help if you need a volunteer.

By considering these questions - and others - you can start to put together a plan for your site. You can decide who needs to be involved in specifying the site and in putting together the content. You can estimate the timescales - it's bound to take at least twice as long as you thought - and decide what features you can afford.

Read more about planning your site in the ICT Hub's Knowledgebase article Getting a Website - Introduction.

Maintaining the site

So you've got your new site. It looks great and it tells everyone about your organisation and the events you've got planned for the next couple of months.

But, hang on a minute. Now you need to change the events page. That coffee morning happened last week so you need to take that off. And the date has been set for the summer ball so you want to start advertising that.

Hopefully when you were planning the site you decided who would be responsible for keeping it up-to-date. It could be a single person or a team. Different people could be responsible for different areas of the site. Whatever you've decided you'll need to be realistic about allowing enough time to do updates.

You'll also need to think about how the updates are done. It is unlikely that you and your staff will have the skills to edit the underlying code which makes up webpages. However, there are tools available to make edit pages much easier:

• Web authoring tools - these tools, such as Dreamweaver, Frontpage and Expression Web, allow you to edit pages in a visual environment without worrying about the underlying code. These tools are sophisticated enough to be used by professional developers but by using only a few of the features you can do enough to keep a site up-to-date.
• Online wizards - some web hosting packages provide a question and answer based "wizard" to help you build pages. These are usually simple to use but offer only basic features so are not suitable for very sophisticated sites.
• Content management systems - a content management system (CMS) is a tool which is designed to make building and maintaining websites easy without needing to understand the underlying technology. CMSs are now widely available and the ICT Hub has a Knowledgebase article describing them and giving some hints on how to choose the right one for your organisation.

Ideally you should decide on the tools you're going to use at the planning stage - especially if you want to use a CMS - as that will have an impact on the development of the site and on resources you may have to allocate for training, etc.

Your site content

Apart from the design and colour scheme of the site this is probably the most exciting part - adding the content and seeing it appear on the internet. Fantastic! Now people on the other side of the world can learn all about your organisation. So what sort of image do you want to portray?

It is a good idea to have a policy that describes the sort of information that you plan to include on your site and how you want to present it. The ICT Hub's Knowledgebase article Developing a web publishing policy explains why a policy document is useful and gives examples of what it could include. Your policy document could be small and simple or large and complex depending on your organisation and the size and complexity of your website.

Much of the content you want for your website will already be available in other formats - perhaps in leaflets and brochures or as part of documents you've written for funding proposals. So should you just copy the text into your website?

You could do, but that might not be the best way to present your information. People don't read websites in the same way that they read printed material. They're more inclined to jump around the page skim-reading and get bored very easily. If you remember that you can think about writing your web content in a way that will keep their attention and help them find the information they want. The article Writing For The Web on the ICT Hub's Knowledgebase gives some pointers on how to write text for the web and how to structure your content.

Accessibility

It is important to ensure that your website is accessible to everyone. Not only is it a legal requirement - under the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 - but it also makes good business sense. If certain groups of people can't access your website then they can't learn about the services you offer and your organisation is missing out on potential volunteers and donations.

When thinking about making your site accessible you should consider the people who will be trying to access it. If your site relies highly on images how will it appear to people with visual impairments? Can your site easily be navigated by someone using a keyboard rather than a mouse? If sound is an integral part of your website experience what happens if someone has a hearing impairment or simply turns off the sound?

The ICT Hub Knowledgebase has an article giving ten tips on making your site accessible to visual impaired people.

During 2006 iT4Communities ran a series of accessibility workshops in partnership with AbilityNet. The workshops gave a practical overview of the key issues involved and ideas about how to address them. They also provided information about UK law and guidelines. They focused on practical solutions and introduced tools aimed at making IT technology more accessible amongst disabled people. The presentations from these workshops are available in our section of resources for charities.

But accessibility isn't just about disabled people. If you design your site with accessibility in mind it's likely to make it a better experience for everyone.

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I hope that this article has given you an idea about some of the things you need to consider when planning, developing and maintaining your website. Remember that if you need help at any stage you can request help from a volunteer. Our volunteers don't just design and build sites; they can also advise on accessibility, hosting packages, maintaining a site and all the other complexities of developing a website.

Anne Donnelly, Project Definer