By Jason Saeler
Your-Propeller-head.com

If there is one point I can’t stress enough, it’s Backup your website! I know you have probably heard this before, but have you heard the horror stories? Recently, I have come across a number of scenarios where my clients have found themselves in a world of hurt. Luckily, none of my clients completely lost their sites, but then a two year old copy isn’t always as good a save as you would think. Here are a couple of examples to emphasize the need to back up your website!

Hosting Company Shut down site:

Recently one of my clients missed an email from their hosting company stating that their credit card information needed to be updated. Unlike most companies, this company didn’t provide a grace period. End result; no website. My client then contacted them , and contacted them, and contacted them to no avail. With no recent copy of their website and a company that didn’t want to respond (so that we could pay them to activate the site and get the files back), we were forced to relocate to a new server. Of course since it was my client, I did have copies of her website. The problem is that I hadn’t done any work for her in nearly 2 years and my copies were out of date.

Hosting Company restored a’ old copy of a website,’ erasing the Current Version

”A few weeks ago, I had a client call me because their website wasn’t coming up. I took a look and found that all of the pages had been converted to 0KB files (If your not a propeller head, this means that all the files in the site were replaced with blanks). I called the hosting company and told them to restore the site, two weeks later the site still hadn’t been restored, so I called again. This time I told them to restore a copy a few months old. The hosting company responded with a short impersonal message stating they couldn’t restore the site. Again I ended up placing a two year old site online, in order to get my client back up and running.

I think the point is simple, back up your website. You wouldn’t buy a brand new car and not ensure it, so what possible excuse can someone have for not backing up their own website. If you want to take the chance go ahead and leave it up to fate, but it could be a costly mistake.

By Jason Saeler
Your-Propeller-head.com

A very common issue I come across is that my clients pay a developer to create a website for them and then do not get all of the files used in the site’s development. This is plain wrong! Can you image buying a car and then finding out that the manufacturer requires special tools that they wouldn’t sell to anyone? You’d have to send the car back to the factory for minor repairs; sound rediculas, then why do people let their web developers pull the same trick. If you pay to have a website developed, that website is yours. You are entitled to all of the files necessary to make changes to the website in the future. If your developer will not provide these, or is resistant, or has a clause in the contract maintaining ownership of the files; find someone else.

Here is a short list of items to ask for when your site is developed:

• If the website is from a template provider, get the template installer, or an extracted copy of the template.
• Demand all Graphics files used for fancy text, logo’s or color changes. Be certain to specify that you do not want only the rasterized graphics used for text (these are more or less useless if you don’t have the original font, or know the exact settings), but that you want every master image file used.
• If your website uses Flash, get the .fla file, it’s required for editing a flash movie. Just a note: If this file is lost, our company will charge a minimal fee to convert an existing .swf (flash format read by your browser) to an editable .fla.
• A full copy of the website that was published to your web hosting company.

Your Developer may use many other files to develop your website, but the items above are the most common. Also remember to keep copies of anything you send to your developer, you never know when you may need them. See my post on Backing Up Your website.

When I develop a website, I include all of the master image files inside the website. That way, my clients can get to them anytime they want. I will also provide a cd with all development files upon request. If your developer can’t, or won’t do this for you -find someone else!

By Jason Saeler
Your-Propeller-head.com

We have all heard the old cliché Did you grow up in a barn?, but how often do we apply it to our websites?

When you pay someone to develop your site, they should keep your directory structure clean. How can you expect to ever get top rankings when there are 30 versions of a page hidden on your website?

Another factor to bear in mind is that the more junk in your site, the harder it is to maintain. If you want to be forced to pay your webmaster to edit your site, then let them leave stuff everywhere. If you want to be able to choose what you do or don’t do, make them keep things neat. After all your the one writing the checks!

Here are some simple tips to keep your site clean, be certain to make sure your webmaster is following them.

• When changing a page, don’t leave the old page in your root directory with a name like changedpage2.html. instead move it to an archive folder, or download it a burn it on a cd.
• Store files in the appropriate folder. Image files belong in your images folder, not your root directory.
• If you have more than 1 website, don’t duplicate your files in each site. instead, choose one site for certain files and always store them there. A great example would be media files. Why would you need them on every website, when you auto responders only point to one site?
• If your not using something anymore, move it to an archive folder, or burn it to cd. the more stuff you have in your root folder, the harder it is to manage

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