Technical Concerns: Tips on Keeping the Back End Tidy

By Gabor Heves, Regional Environment Centre for Central and Eastern Europe (REC)
May 2001

At the planning stage of a Web site overhaul, it is crucial to make an inventory of the current technical options and determine what is necessary for your site and what is not. Decisions need to be prepared carefully as they may have long-lasting impacts. In this chapter some of the relevant issues will be highlighted.

Inherited technology vs. complete change

Online publishing is very much dependent on the underlying software and hardware infrastructure. In spite of the existence of general standards (such as HTML, TCP/IP, Java, etc.) it is rather easy to be "closed into" a certain company's product. Before deciding on whether to stay with an inherited technology (e.g., server software/hardware, database software) or to opt for a new one, the pros and cons of both options need to be assessed in detail.

Options to consider may include issues such as:

• open source vs. proprietary software;
• software/hardware product user support;
• technological level of software/hardware product;
• market penetration of software/hardware product;
• support of standards;
• how a solution fits into your organization's information technology infrastructure;
• requirements of your online content (need for any new online services, multimedia, programming, data management);
• familiarity of in-house staff with software/hardware solutions/products;
• ease of maintenance; and
• financial options (price, any discounts, type of payment).

Static vs. dynamic site

Depending on the type of information you put online as well as how you manage your online content, you may either opt for static HTML documents or for an integrated database solution. Static HTML pages are usually easier to manage at the initial stage and seem to be suitable for most sustainable development NGOs with small to medium size Web sites. With larger Web sites, the complexity of issues is aggravated, and therefore dynamic page servers (as well as content management systems such as ColdFusion) may be of great importance. Also, if you have a relatively consistent but regularly changing section on your site, it may be a better option to go for dynamic (database driven) pages. An example of this may include online publishing of articles: they follow a similar structure (Author, data, title, keywords, body, etc.) as well as follow each other on a regular basis.

Changing the site structure

Before you redesign your site, you may want to consider changing your site's structure. If your site has existed for a relatively short period of time, few of your pages are probably linked or bookmarked, giving you relatively large freedom to remove or change files. If your site is a relatively established one, it is recommended to avoid deleting pages. Try to create a new structure instead that builds on the files that are already in place, or create shortcuts.

New vs. established technologies. Considering the rate of technological innovation, before re-launching a Web site, it is good practice to look at the current status of the technological level of your site vs. the Internet. If there is a large gap between the two, promising new technologies should be considered. However, considering the type of work sustainable development organizations do, such revisions should only occur if they significantly improve the value of the online information and do not exclude many users from visiting your site (e.g., do not require extra software to be installed on the user's computer, are not considered as a computing power intensive technology (primarily multimedia), or bandwidth intensive technology (e.g., sound, video or large pictures.)).

Technical infrastructure of your Internet service provider. If you host your Web Site with an Internet service provider (ISP), it is good practice to consult them before starting your redesign process. At this point you may also want to consider changing your ISP or bringing your site in-house.

Connectivity. As usability tests show, short download times are of highest importance to users. Considering the content-oriented sites sustainable development organizations have, bandwidth intensive components should be avoided, such as large images, multimedia or Java Applets. Download times should be tested before re-launching a site (e.g., by using a testing site such as Bobby). When assessing connectivity, always consider the whole network connection from the server to your users and plan for potential network bottlenecks.

Standards (HTML, XHTML, XML, CFM, ASP, PHP, CSS, Java, JavaScript, ImageMaps, etc.). The general rule of thumb is to choose those standards that make your site accessible for as large a portion of your audience as possible. To this end, you may want to consider HTML 4, Java, JavaScript and server-end solutions (e.g., e-mail forms, databases, scripts). The latter are more complex to implement but you will avoid accessibility problems on the users' side. In general, it is recommended to go for a version of a standard that is supported by most of the browsers. Organizations with smaller Web sites may consider generic standards (e.g., HTML or JavaScripts), while larger, more complex sites may consider a range of standards (e.g., style sheets, content management software, database software, Java Applets, XML).

Compatibility. Web sites of sustainable development organizations should be compatible on as many browsers and computers as possible. Therefore it is recommended to keep the content and design relatively simple. Before launching or designing a new site, extensive testing must take place. The recommended hardware platforms to test on include PCs, Macintoshes or Unix machines. Browsers to test with may include Internet Explorer, Netscape, Opera, Lynx (text-based), and the Web-TV browser. Preferably, different versions of those mentioned should also be tried out. The Web server logs will give you important information on what browsers or computers your users use. If your Web site's language uses accented latin characters, use the standard HTML codes (e.g., © for or é for é); Do not use smart codes for quotation marks (instead of "" use ").

Templates and style sheets. It is highly recommended that before you redesign a Web site, you come up with a standard design template as well as style sheets. These will help you keep your site consistent as well as make editing and future redesigns easier. You may consider supplying the headers and footers of each page from a database or from a separate template file. In this case you only need to edit the body of each page, and the header/footer/look of the page will be consistent from page to page. If you use static HTML pages, make sure that header and footer sections of the pages are always the same: this will make it easier to do find/replace later. CSS style sheets are very useful for making your design consistent, but they only work with Internet Explorer. Therefore, it's recommended to design pages that look good on browsers that do not support CSS (e.g., embed formatting instructions in the <BODY  tag of each page. This you can find and replace at the next redesign.)

Technical knowledge of Web staff. If the Web site is run by your organization, the expertise and knowledge of Web and technical support staff has a large influence on the choice of any hardware or software solutions. If the technical skills of your staff are limited, you may want to go for simpler solutions: e.g., Web site on Macintosh or on Windows NT, plain HTML Web pages. If the knowledge and capacity of your staff allows it, you may consider more complex solutions or changing to a new software and hardware solution.

Server software and hardware. The most widely used computer platforms for Web publishing are Unix, Windows NT and Macintosh machines. The Windows NT Server has a built-in Web server software, which is readily accessible and easy to manage. Web servers on the Macintosh are also quite user friendly and easy to manage. Open source Web servers and a wide range of utilities are available for Unix machines, primarily Linux. Windows NT is also well-supported in this respect. From a technical point of view Unix machines offer the most professional solution—however they are the most complex to manage (just consider the fact that the Internet was born on Unix machines). There is a wide range of server softwares for all of these platforms, which differ in complexity, reliability, price, and development and ownership scheme (proprietary vs. open source).

Subcontracting technical work. Depending on the size of the organization as well as its focus, technical development and content maintenance work may be subcontracted. Some organizations only subcontract development work and take care of the routine work themselves. While technical issues do not belong to the central focus of most sustainable development organizations, it is important that a minimal amount of technical knowledge is accumulated in-house. For more information on subcontracting, please see the topic "Managing Content and Workflows."

Search options. As a general rule of thumb, if your site is more than about 50 Web pages you should make it searchable. For this you can either rely on the built-in search functions of most Web server software, or you can use a third-party software (e.g., ASPSeek or Phantom). To facilitate the searching of your Web site, the use of HTML meta-tags is strongly recommended. This will improve the indexing of your pages by search engines.

Frames. When you plan a redesign, try to avoid the use of frames (if you already had them, consider removing them!). There are a couple of reasons for this: individual pages will no longer be identified by a unique Internet address, the screen size is reduced, search engines may have trouble indexing your pages, users tend to be confused, bookmarking pages may no longer work, etc. To build on the strength of frames without their weaknesses, consider using templates or "include files." (These text files contain static information that is the same on every page, and you refer to these from your HTML files with an <!-- #include --> instruction).

Financial options. The choice of a new software or hardware product may depend largely on your financial options. A software product may be proprietary or open source. There may be educational discounts on software or hardware products. Some vendors may charge for the use of their software or hardware product based on usage and not per licence. Some other software products may be of a modular nature. The financial conditions of running a Web site may also depend on whether you outsource any or all of your Web work or you do them in-house. In both cases, connectivity costs can have a significant impact on the financials of running your site.