Technical maintenance of a website refers to any changes to the site that require alterations to its programming code - eg for the site's graphics and navigation, metadata, database, e-commerce solution. Technical maintenance also refers to adjustments that improve the website's speed and reliability, and monitor usage of the site.  

Maintaining the technical aspects of the website requires specialist knowledge and skills in website programming, so technical maintenance generally falls to one person or, for larger websites, a small group of technical experts. The webmaster, as the technician is usually known, would normally receive instructions from the e-business management team and a website manager regarding desired changes to the site.  

As with content maintenance and enhancements to the website, this section is concerned with maintenance only, not with large scale changes that would spark a return to the planning phase.

What to do

Appoint a webmaster - a person to manage the technical aspects of the website or to liaise with outside experts.

The webmaster should determine a schedule for technical maintenance that indicates what is to be done daily, weekly, and monthly and what tasks are undertaken only when the need arises. The schedule should include all maintenance items and indicate for each, what associated tasks are to be performed daily, weekly etc.  

A technical maintenance list might include some or all of:

• the speed of the site
• hotlinks to other sites - eg validity of the hotlinks
• the reliability of the web server - includes dealing with error reports from the web server
• the speed and reliability of information derived from the database
• email lists - includes removing faulty email addresses
• user sessions, hits and traffic through the site
• the exporting of data collected from online forms to the appropriate personnel
•  the integrity and performance of the e-commerce system, if applicable
• interactive elements of the site - eg play-back feature for audio/video
• the use of metadata in the website.

Double-click on the link to download a Word document that you can use to check the main technical aspects of the site:  e-businessguide Template - Technical Solution Checklist (98 kb)

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