Making sure a web site functions properly goes beyond the coding of the web site. Issues arise that require investigation of both the issue and the options for solving it, the ramifications of those options and the short-term/long-term value involved. Web sites come with a growing amount of outside bureaucracy as well – things that the owner of the web site needs to get taken care of, but doesn’t have the knowledge to provide an informed answer.
That is where your web developer (or webmaster if you must) comes in. Just last week, we dealt with the following questions:
Does our shopping cart meet with the Certificate Requirements of PCI DSS going forward? And the answer was: yes. We double checked, but we aren’t going to use carts that fail PCI DSS requirements.
Can you get an SSL Certificate installed on our website? And the answer is: of course, and it is done. And we will require a certificate for every site we manage this year, because Google is pushing it that hard.
Why does the Google Maps entry for our site come up first when I search our organization on my mobile phone? That happens when you use Google’s mobile search.
Can you help us change the account contacts for our registered domains? We can, but we need the domain registrar credentials in order to do that, along with the specifics of who should be the account contacts.
Can you help me place an image that will link to a video in my MailChimp blast? Easy enough, and we did it.
Can you help us transfer our domain from our old webmaster’s domain registrar account to an account that we can control? We are going to have to coordinate with your old webmaster, and once we discuss it with him it should be no problem.
Can you check our server? Our website seems slow. Answer: It was slow. We moved it to another web server after discussing the load issues with that server with the hosting company.
Can you deactivate our site? Our organization has been absorbed by another organization. Well, this is sad for us, but we will archive it first and then deactivate the web site. Should the domain be repointed to another site?
Some of these questions require research, some require existing knowledge, and some require additional work. None of them are things most folks think about when they get their web site developed. But the web developer will.