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Summary
The story of Rita and her gang illustrates predictable issues that confront a web operator. A web site swells from a skunkworks effort tended by one person to an enterprise-wide web site supported and maintained by hundreds of contributors. Some tend to the web site full-time, such as a Java developer implementing core functionality. Others contribute on a more casual basis, such as a contract writer adding a promotional piece against a predefined template.
Beneath the surface clutter of events, the swirl of growth in staff, and the expanded role of the web site in the business, the web site has a life cycle of its own. It has a predictable set of universal life-cycle issues related to content management. Savvy managers consider these issues. We can see these issues in the fictitious story of Rita and her gang.
We have seen how the development of very small web sites, ranging in size up through enterprise-class web sites, can be managed with different approaches. For a very small site, especially one that has a single developer, it is common for editing to occur on the live site. At the next level of sophistication, introduce a staging web site where one or more developers copy their changes for testing, review, and approval. (See Figure 7.) For a larger team, or to support concurrent projects, introduce independent edit areas. Beyond 5,000 assets or a team of 10–12, it is highly recommended to use a content-management system.
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Figure 7 Choosing an approach to managing web assets depends on the size of your web operation.