Finally, a few tips in general about maintaining a website.

DO

• Think about how you want users to proceed through your site

• Use a structure that is simple and easy for the user to follow

• Use folders to organize your files

• Use folder/file names that are easily recognizable

• Group related files into the same folder

DON'T

• Place All Files at Same Level (For example, at the level of the home page)

• Create An Individual Folder for Each File (Instead, group related files into folders)

• Make Your Structure Anymore Complicated than is Necessary

CREATE A USER FRIENDLY WEBSITE
Make sure the navigation of your site makes sense to the user. Ask someone else to navigate through your site. Also, it is useful to view your site on different computers with different browsers to get a feel for how it looks with alternative browsers and equipment. If you are going to ask your students to view downloadable files, then you need to provide them with a variety of formats such as .rtf, .pdf, etc. 

UPDATE FREQUENTLY
You also need to make sure that the material on your website is current. If you are going to use Calendar, then make sure it reflects any changes/updates in the class schedule. You will probably want to have homework posted to the Calendar also. Make sure to keep this updated with current assignments and updated due dates. You can use the features within Calendar to post and take off notes, assignments, etc. as necessary. Students rely heavily on the website to be current! In addition, when you do make changes, be sure to tell students either via email or via posts to the Forum. Most students will print out your syllabus the first day of the semester and work off of that. Therefore, they need to be told when changes have been made.

BE RESPONSIBLE FOR EXTERNAL LINKS
You also need to check all of your external links to make sure they are active and also that they still contain the content that you want. Since you are relying on someone else to maintain those sites, you need to make sure they are available throughout your course and relevant to your course. There is nothing more frustrating than clicking on a link and having nothing happen.

INTERACT WITH STUDENT USERS
If you constantly solicit feedback from your students regarding the website's design, development, and management then you will be assured of its quality and ease of use. Students will generally let you know if they are having problems, but it is useful to set up a Forum just for student questions, problems, etc. That way, if they experience difficulties, they know that you are readily available to fix the problems they are experiencing.

MANAGE YOUR SITE
File and folder management is also an important part of your course website.  As you add new files and/or folders, be sure they are properly integrated with the rest of your site.  This mainly involves being sure that there are links to the new material so that students can access that material quickly and easily. 

Another aspect of managing your course website is purging files and folders that are no longer needed.  When you delete files, be sure to eliminate any existing links to those files that might still remain on your site. While purging unnecessary material can be time consuming, it will make subsequent file management easier just because there will be fewer files in the Folder List (within FrontPage) to deal with. 

Instead of completely deleting files, another option is to put all of your "old" files into a specially marked folder (i.e. "OldStuff"), so that if you need that material at another time, you can just pull it up from its special folder. Sometimes you might want to keep the homework list from a previous semester or want to know what the readings were for last semester. If you save the old pages in a special folder, then they are accessible still but not cluttering your web.

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