Are the right people maintaining your Web site?

As an IT consultant, Jason LaFollette has helped many companies create Web sites. He also found most companies ill equipped to maintain their sites once his initial work was done.

"In most cases, the process of updating a Web site is a pretty tangled mess," says LaFollette, a project manager with Tallan, a Glastonbury, Conn., IT consulting firm. "Someone in marketing or public relations calls a VP and asks permission to add new content. Eventually, the job is assigned to IT, and by the time the new page is written it has been changed by four people and doesn't turn out the way anyone expected."

To prevent such situations from constantly recurring, LaFollette recommends clients use a Web site content management solution. These programs inject the same level of discipline that accompanies a typical IT project, while placing the actual work of updating a Web site's content in the hands of non-technical people.

Most content management solutions contain templates for creating and updating individual Web pages. "These packages typically contain a lot of advanced functionality such as built-in search tools, personalization engines, and news content pages," says LaFollette. "That is important because it allows a company to make the people who are most familiar with the site's content—such as the marketing department—responsible for keeping it up to date."

LaFollette says most content management solutions also contain workflow capabilities, which allow instituting and enforcing policies about who is allowed to make, approve, and publish changes to a site.

Solutions from top-tier companies like Vignette, Documentum, or Interwoven can cost $200,000 or more, but open-source systems are available as well, says LaFollette.

For information on commercial content management solutions, LaFollette recommends visiting cmswatch.com. Information on open-source solutions can be found at oscom.org.