After we at Ireland Website Design design and handover your new website to you, you will inevitably want to make some changes and additions down the line as you for example add new products or services etc. We provide training to show you how to maintain your new website, but depending on your (or your staff’s) levels of proficiency, you may be able to do a certain amount of this by yourself. However there are other aspects and more advanced changes which you may need our help and support with.
Examples of what you could do:
Adding a New Page
It is relatively simple to add a new page to a website. You can even create a duplicate of a current page to keep the overall layout the same but just change the content to reflect what you want the new page to do. When you create a new page be sure to make sure that the URL is unique and not the same as another of your web pages as this will cause problems.
Updating and Changing Images
If you start to sell a new product, open a new premises or just would like a fresher image(s) on your website, you can add these or replace them with older images. When working with images you have the ability to change their position on the page, their size and dimensions and also have the option to add a link to them so when clicked on, they bring the user to another section of your website.
Misc.
Like the two examples listed above, we will teach you how to make many changes and additions to your website pages when we hand over your newly designed website to you. This also includes adding and editing products to your e-Commerce site/online shop and the likes of image galleries and text layouts such as columns and grids etc.
Examples of what you may need support with:
Backing up Your Website
It is imperative to back up your website periodically. If for any unfortunate reason that your website goes offline (such as problems with your hosting and/or domain provider), you may need to restore your website from a previous backup. This means that if you backup your website today and it goes down tomorrow, you can restore your website to how it looked since the backup. With this, you run a lower risk of losing work that you have done to your website. At Ireland Website Design we can schedule and action regular backups of your website for you to minimise your loss of work should your website go down.
Compression
To optimise your website and have it run and perform as efficient and swift on both desktop and on mobile, it can benefit from a process called compression. This reduces the file sizes of images and cuts down on text files by adding zip files and relevant extensions to both HTML and XML coding. This is a very technical and complex process for those who are familiar with it and as such it would be recommended to let a web developer action this to prevent any interruption to your website.
Monitoring and Updating of Software + Plugins
Your website is built with many different software and plugin packages that each require updates and monitoring on a regular basis. For example, if you have what is known as a social slider plugin (this can take the form of a visual overlay displaying social media icons (e.g. FaceBook) linked to your business social media accounts), this will require updates to make sure that it performs at the fastest speed as possible and also to implement any new social media channels that come to the market. The design and theme of your website is a software package that dictates the colours, design and overall visual style of your website. The developers who created this theme often make changes to how it works, looks and responds. These arrive in the form of updates which you must manually implement into your website. Another important thing to remember with software and plugin updates is that older versions that are left running on your website are more vulnerable and susceptible to hacking and malware as their older versions are not supported.
Misc.
Alongside the above three examples of how we can help you, we can also action the likes of security monitoring, check and fix broken links, implement monthly strategy calls to further improve your website, offer suggestions specific to your website as they arise and more.
We will know from working with you during the website design process as to what level of support you may need if you choose to take it. Click here to visit our support page where you will find answers to some common questions and details to our various support packages. At Ireland Website Design we are a company that are happy and proud to build and then nurture your website once it goes live. The above are just a handful of examples as to the differences between simple changes and additions to your website and the more complicated and technical revisions that may need to be made. With any work on the back end of your website, there is always a risk of your website going offline if you are not sure as to what you are doing. Talk with us about the level of support you may or may not need and the plans which may suit your needs best.
