Maintaining Your Page

Once you put a web page out on the web, you can't just leave it. In order to entice people to come back to your page time and time again, you need to keep the information up to date and accurate. The information on your page will determine how often you'll need to update. If the page is text from a handbook, you'll only need to update when you update the handbook. Much of the information at Cameron needs to be updated each semester. Plan to take a look at your page at least once a month to make sure information is still accurate.

If you have any links on your page, it's a good idea to also take a few minutes each month to make sure they are still working. Pages are constantly being moved to different locations, and if you have a link to a page that has moved, your link will no longer work. You may even want to add links periodically as more and more information becomes available on the web.

You'll also need a way for people to contact you if they have questions or comments about your page.

Adding a "This page is maintained by..." Message

You can do pretty much anything you want here as long as it includes a way for people to e-mail the person who maintains the page (which may or may not be you). This is done the same way as a link is created except you will have mailto: instead of http, gopher, or whatever. Here's a sample:

<HTML>

<TITLE>Maintaining Your Page</TITLE>

.................................................................

This page is maintained by <A HREF= "mailto:julied@cameron.edu">Julie A. Duncan</A>

</BODY>

</HTML>

You'll notice I put the message at the very end of the document. This is normally where mailto messages are located although sometimes I'll include mine below a menu if I have a multi-part document. This way people can read one section of my document, click return to menu, and then e-mail me. If it's at the bottom of the document, readers will have to scroll down through sections they aren't interested in reading.

It's also a good idea to put a horizontal line before your mail message. This separates this section from the rest of the document and makes it easily recognizable.

After you've added this part, you're ready to put your page on the web.

Page maintained by Julie A. Duncan, ITS
Cameron University, Lawton Oklahoma