Codepad – The ClassHelper.org™ Blog

By Phil Paradis (philip.paradis@classhelper.org)

I’ve been online since the early days of bulletin board systems (the dial-up kind, where you used terminal software like Procomm Plus, running under DOS to connect to an ANSI text BBS server, over a modem connected to your 386 PC via a serial cable… whew!). My first exposure to the World Wide Web was circa 1994, when primitive HTML pages with even the barest of image content took a few minutes to load in Netscape. Connection rates were measured in baud (bits per second), not megabytes per second, and there were still TV sets floating around with a wire leading from the remote to the tube. With all the technological advances and sweeping changes we’ve seen since then, those “good old days” still shape my views on how online operations ought to be handled. In my opinion, that’s a good thing.

I’ve written this article to scratch an itch. I spend a lot of time in forums talking to folks who are just starting out with web development and online businesses. Much of that time is devoted to giving tips on programming, web development, and marketing. What follows is my personal “top ten” list of best practices, along with a list of practices that should be avoided at all cost. Almost everything you’ll read here has been said a thousand times before in various contexts. A lot of smart developers and entrepreneurs have undoubtedly picked up most of this knowledge along the way to success in the world of Web operations, but there’s also a huge population of novices who could benefit from this experience. I hope you find something useful here. Without further ado, here’s the list.

The Top Ten “Dos” of Running a Web Operation

1. Build sites around topics you’re passionate about. No matter what your personal interests may be, chances are good that a whole bunch of others share those interests. You might think your fascination with Australian cave crickets trained to play Beethoven’s fifth symphony is unique, but there’s probably millions of people around the globe who share your appreciation of symphonic insects. Working with topics you’re truly interested in means you’ll be much more likely to put in the kind of sustained effort required for long term success.

2. Post early, post often. If you’re seriously interested in developing a revenue stream from your sites, whether you’re focusing on ad earnings or premium paid content, you’ve got to invest serious time in your business. This means treating your operation like a full time job, even if you already have one. You’ve got to view the time you spend growing your web operations as an investment in your future. Devote your time to producing high quality original content, whether that means continuously improving a web application or consistently adding articles and posts to a content-based site. Search engines can take time to appropriately index and rank your content, so it’s important to continuously publish new material. Visitors to your sites appreciate fresh content tailed to their interests, and will be a great source of referrals for quality sites.

3. Take hosting seriously. Ideally, you’ll be running your operations from a dedicated server that you alone control. In the early growth periods of your web operations, there’s nothing wrong with hosting your sites on a bare-bones server connected to a single business class broadband connection. As long as you have a static IP and reliable DNS, you’ve got a decent foundation when it comes to connectivity until your bandwidth requirements increase. Maintaining direct physical control over the machine that houses your operations safeguards you against a lot of problems, but it also means more work on your part. Even in the early stages, many people prefer to host their sites on managed servers run by reputable hosting outfits, housed in commercial datacenters. For the cost-conscious, virtual private servers offer most of the total control benefits of dedicated servers at a fraction of the price, although you’ll still be responsible for your VPS configuration and maintenance. If you’re not at all familiar with server administration, it would be a wise move to develop an early partnership with someone who is.

4. Perform backups religiously. There is nothing worse than investing months in a project, only to experience a catastrophic failure related to hardware or human error. Make daily backups of all website, application, and database contents. With Linux and BSD-based server operating systems, this can easily be accomplished through freely available software running on a local network machine (I recommend Dean Gaudet’s Unattended rdiff-backup HOWTO). Various services are also available to help your manage your back policy, at various prices (rsync.net has some good rsync backup plans). Periodically verify your backups for completeness and ease of restoration to your production environment. It’s a good idea to keep a second set of backups in a separate location to guard against disaster.

5. Care about Web standards. Take the time to really learn the tools of your trade. Even if you’re using a content management system to produce most of your content, learn the basics of HTML and CSS. If you’re not a professional web developer, pick up a couple of books on effective web design techniques at your local bookstore. Test your sites for validity using the online W3C validation tools. Correct glaring shortcomings where possible. Your sites will rank better in search engines as a direct result of your efforts, and you’ll experience fewer problems with browser incompatibility. If you’ve already got a bunch of content on your sites, I wrote an article on converting an existing site to valid XHTML that may prove useful.

6. Test your sites in all major web browsers. Even sites that are coded according to widely accepted design principles and standards can (and often will) fail to render properly in certain web browsers. Test your sites in as many browsers as possible, paying special attention to mainstream players like Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, and Safari. BrowserShots can show you how your site renders in dozens of web browsers within a couple of minutes. Within reason, try to ensure your layouts look decent at as many screen resolutions as possible. If your community could benefit from it, it’s a good idea to develop a separate version of your site designed for mobile devices. This process is made much easier when Web standards are followed from the start.

7. Be paranoid when it comes to online threats. Especially if you’re the one maintaining your server, ensure that all available security updates are applied on a regular basis. When installing software packages, read all the available documentation that comes with them, paying special attention to sections related to security. Monitor the home pages of any CMS or forum software your site utilizes for new security vulnerabilities. Poorly managed dynamic environments can lead to servers being compromised for illegal purposes or complete data loss.

8. Know yourself, and pay attention to your competition. Use analytics software such as Google Analytics and Quantcast to keep an eye on your traffic patterns. For sales-focused sites, analytics tools are invaluable for establishing and monitoring sales goals, advertising campaigns, search engine statistics, and user interest. In cases where competing sites are well established, spend some quality time analyzing their site structure and content. If you’ve got a new operation, looking at established, successful sites in your niches is the best way to get ideas for improving your own content. Make a habit of experimenting with various website layouts and ad placements to determine what works best for your business.

9. Talk about your sites. Word of mouth has always been the best advertising. Discuss your sites with anyone and everyone who’s interested in your areas of operations. Always accept honest feedback from those you know personally and from your visitor community. Put your domain name(s) on everything you distribute as part of your business (letterhead, business cards, CD-ROMs, etc). Responsibly use social networking systems to keep online communities up to date on your content, and always be a good community member by helping others out with their operations.

10. Maintain a positive attitude. Let’s face it: you’re probably not going to be an instant online success. Your eventual success depends entirely on the level of effort you’re willing to put into developing and maintaining your online operations. Hard work will pay off in the end, if you can maintain your focus. Don’t burn yourself out churning out 90 hours a week worth of content, as you’ll only wind up making mistakes that could have been easily avoided had you worked at a saner pace. Emergency room bills for heart attacks can be real drain on your operating funds.

The Top Ten “Don’ts” of Running a Web Operation

1. Don’t publish content on topics you’re utterly ignorant of. Every day, countless people get caught up in the idea that they can achieve financial independence if they just follow the sage advice of some “web guru” and do precisely what they’re told in an online get rich quick scheme (conveniently priced at only $50 USD and delivered right to their inbox as an e-book, of course). More often than not, people are assured that all they have to do is start blogging about “high paying keywords,” set up a Google Adsense account, and watch their bank account swell with instant wealth. Another common scheme involves reselling the same e-book you just paid for. Sadly (but unsurprisingly), the road to riches isn’t paved with these business practices. Just like the “real” world, knowledge matters. If you’re not a doctor, you probably shouldn’t be dispensing hourly blog posts on chronic medical conditions. If you’re not a financial specialist, your articles on the stock market and money management probably aren’t going to be worth a whole lot. Above all else, do not join the millions of amateurs posting endless drivel about getting rich quick through blogging.

2. Don’t use unethical tactics to promote your sites. Email spam tops the list of shady practices that should be avoided at all cost. It’s illegal in many jurisdictions, and is usually an incredibly poor method of promotion anyhow. Spam in other forms is a big no-no as well; don’t try making 1,000 two-sentence posts in forums around the Web with links to your sites. That’s a quick way to develop a bad reputation and raise an admin’s blood pressure. When you’re contributing to social networking sites, be an active participant in promoting the work of others. Don’t just submit 15 Diggs a day on sites you own.

3. Don’t skimp on hosting. Related to number 3 on the “Dos” list, avoid discount shared hosting outfits. It doesn’t matter that they’ve got brand recognition, thousands of customers, and claim to offer limitless resources. Shared hosting cannot offer a sustainable level of performance for your sites, you are at the mercy of the behavior of  other customers on the server, and your sites will never to as secure as they should be. You will get burned in the end, and trying to move your sites to better hosting setups down the road can be an incredibly painful process. Go with a reputable managed, dedicated, or VPS hosting outfit from the start. I’ve used Linode.com for several years, and highly recommend their services (note that they don’t have a referral program, and I’m not being paid to say this).

4. Don’t just assume your data is backed up properly. If you can’t recover from a hardware or system failure within a few hours, you’re in serious trouble. Failures and data loss will happen eventually; it’s only a matter of time before something goes wrong. If you enlist the help of others in developing your sites, make sure you know exactly how everything works and where data is getting stored.

5. Don’t take security and privacy lightly. If you’re running sites that store users’ personal and/or billing information, you’d better be taking security and privacy seriously. Various laws exist now that pose serious protection requirements for personal information, and if you ever lose the trust of your user community it’s practically impossible to get it back. That said, be honest with the public about problems if they do occur. If you’ve done your research and taken reasonable measures to safeguard sensitive information, you’ve done your job right. Some enterprising young hacker breaking into your customer database is regrettable, but you weren’t storing passwords and credit card information in plain text, were you? Always have a publicly available privacy policy on your sites that explains in plain English what information you collect on your visitors and how it’s used.

6. Don’t design for a single browser. Even if you’re coding web applications that will only be used in a single environment today, there’s no guarantee they won’t need to work on other devices and browsers in the future. In fact, that’s a likely outcome. The biggest mistake you could make with a public website is to prevent users from seeing your content because they’re not using your favorite browser and operating system.

7. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Wedding yourself and your sites to a single server operating system, database environment, or programming language is asking for trouble. Try to develop your systems to be as flexible as possible. Using Linux-based server operating systems is a good idea for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is the ease with which you can switch to a different distribution if it fits your needs better in the future. For applications that heavily use databases, use actively developed, mature products like MySQL and PostgreSQL wherever possible. Betting the farm on somebody’s hot new object-relational database software isn’t using good business sense.

8. Don’t assume your customers and users are satisfied. Get regular feedback from your community on how you could improve your sites. Site surveys, regular follow-up emails and phone calls with established customers, and community forums are all great ways to keep your finger on the community’s pulse. Remember, if you aren’t making people happy, someone else will.

9. Don’t live in a vacuum. It’s understandable that from time to time, you may need to sequester yourself in your office for long hours developing your sites. That’s part of working hard, putting in the time necessary to grow your business. Related to number 8 on the “Dos” list, take time every day to research new developments in your areas of interest. Build relationships with others in your business and closely related markets. At the end of the day, your business is about the relationships you maintain with other human beings.

10. Don’t get discouraged. Markets are volatile, economic conditions fluctuate wildly over the short term, and unexpected setbacks happen. That’s all just a part of life. Instant success is a rarity in any business, and those who can keep a positive attitude over the long term are the ones who achieve real growth. Take a moment to congratulate yourself on the progress you’ve already made, and get excited about the plans you’ve got for the future. After all, it’s your future.