Updating Your Website

One of the easiest ways for your website to fall into obscurity, is by leaving it to rot when you're through posting all of your initial content. It's tempting to just be “done”, and relax, but such is not the case when it comes to websites.

Updating your website, keeping it filled with fresh content is a must. If you're a part time webmaster, this can be rather tough – there's a lot you have to do during the day, and writing another article might not be one of your favourite things to do.

Whether you're managing a hundred websites or just one – you need a calender of some sort to keep up on things. In a webmasters world, there are deadlines everywhere. Early on in my career, I was disorganized – and I paid the price. I had an up and coming website, I'd been developing for about a year. It was starting to be rather profitable, to the tune of about $60.00 a month – awesome. Except for that I somehow missed the email that said my domain was about to expire. It expired, and before I knew it some other company bought that domain that I made for $20.00 and wanted to sell it to me for $3000!! Ridiculous! Now, I have a calender. I personally love Google Calendar http://www.google.com/calendar/ as I can sync it with my Blackberry. I've learned that I don't do well with paper – and thanks to google, I don't have to. They even have a very handy documents storage, picture sharing, email, contact list... It's my mobile office, and I make full use of it – oh, and it's free! So now, I don't have to worry as much about updating my website, because I know that my calender will remind me exactly when to renew my domain name, or pay my web host, or whatever. And I can even share the calender with my wife, so she knows what I'm up to!

Needless to say, updating your website doesn't have to be about content – even just the infrastructure of your site needs to be updated too. If you build your site using Joomla, you'll quickly find that it's plugins and modules are constantly being worked on and require updates every now and then. Joomla itself is often patched for security reasons and bug fixes.

Updating content isn't a matter of sitting down and grinding out a 10000 word essay. A picture here, a note on your blog there, a quick article with your morning coffee. Integrate your website into your life – dedicate some time to it on your calender, and give your followers something to ponder every now and then.

Updating your website can be tedious work, but it's absolutely necessary to be successful – so, somewhere, on a Google calender, or an old-fashioned paper one, commit to keeping things fresh and interesting for your website's visitors.