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Hi, and welcome to OurChurch.Com's "Questions and Answers", where we have the answers to
your questions. Today we are going to discuss web maintenance. "Should I do it myself?"
Hi, I'm Mark Steinbrueck with OurChurch.Com. In this video I want to talk about the question
that I'm often asked: Web Maintenance - Should I do it Myself??
Let's talk about web maintenance and doing it yourself versus having a web developer
company do it for you. What are the pros and cons of maintaining
a website yourself versus having a web developer do it for you?
Maintaining the website yourself will take more of your time but it will typically save
you money. That's the advantage of maintaining it yourself. Advantage of updating the website
yourself is that you can do it anytime that you want while if you have a web developer
maintain it for you often times there's going to be some kind of a leave time it might be
a few days, it might be a few hours sometimes it takes a week or more. Typically it's going
to be a lot faster for you to be able to maintain the website yourself.
But ask yourself if either you or someone else at your organization has the time and
the desire to maintain the website internally. If you don't or you don't have that time,
you don't have the desire to maintain the website yourself most likely it won't be done
then. In those situations it is recommended that you consider having a web developer or
company maintain the website for you simply then you have new content put on there on
a regular basis. We suggest that you try to do it yourself
if possible but if you don't have the time or you don't have the desire to do it then
often times it is better to have a company or an organization do it for you.
Something else to take in consideration when it comes to web maintenance is:
Are you using a desktop-based platform or a web-based platform?
Simply put a desktop-based platform as software that is stored on your computer and web-based
platform is something that is not stored on your computer you simply need to have access
to the web to be able to log into them and back into the website to be able to maintain
it. There are limitations to going with the desktop-based
software and simply put is you have to have it on every single computer that is going
to be used in maintaining the website. If you have three or four people on your web
team that means that each of them has to have it on their computer to do it. If it is unavailable
on the smartphone or a tablet that means that they are not able to do it that way. If they
have a desktop versus a notebook computer they'd have to have it on both of those units
as well. The preferred way or the recommended way is
to go with a web-based platform because that means that you can do it from anywhere in
the world that you have internet access you can use a computer, a smartphone or a tablet
to be able to do that. Is training provided?
So whether you maintain the site yourself or not that's a very big part of it. Are you
going to know how to do that? Find out how to update the website. What kind of training
is provided? Is it going to be done by video tutorials, are there phone trainings that
are provided or are there reading tutorials that you have to go online and read to be
able to gain the knowledge to maintain the website?
How easy is it to maintain yourself? Some web platforms are very simple to use
whereas others are more complicated. It is very important to research the platform that
the web developer will be using to make your website or that you will be using when you
build your own website and find out what other people are saying about it. Find out if they
are saying that it's easy and if it's complicated. It's something that's very important to know
before getting into using a particular software platform.
Is there support if I need help maintaining the website?
When you do get stuck or you do need help maintaining the website is there support that's
provided and how is it provided? Is it provided by email, is it provided by filling online
forms, is there a phone number that you can contact? But all those questions are important
to have answers to before selecting a choice of maintaining the website yourself or having
a web developer do it for you. I hope that this was informative and I hope
that it gave you a lot of good information as far as maintaining the website yourself
or having a web developer maintain it for you.
If you have any questions or would like to talk to someone at OurChurch.Com please complete
the consultation request form below and we will be more than happy to speak with you.