Website Owner's Manual

Published on: June 5, 2008 by Paul Boag

I have been working on my book (The Website Owner's Manual) for a while, but finally I have something to show you.

Update: You can now order the website owners manual and get access to chapters as they are written.

No, I haven't finished it and to be honest my progress continues to be slow. In fact it is so slow my publisher is currently looking for a release date of December! Oh the shame :(

A recap: What the book's about

First of all a quick recap on what the book is about. This is what my publisher has written...

Just because you're responsible for your organization's web presence doesn't mean you know how to build a website. The job of planning, launching, and managing a site often falls to people who have little or no experience in web design or development. Website Owner's Manual is a book for the thousands of marketers, IT managers, project leaders, and business owners who need to put a website in place and keep it running with a minimum of trouble.

Website Owner's Manual helps you form a vision for your site, guides you through the process of selecting a web design agency, and gives you enough background information to make intelligent decisions throughout the development process. This book provides a jargon-free overview of web design, including accessibility, usability, online marketing, and web development techniques. You'll gain a practical understanding of the technologies, processes, and ideas that drive a successful website.

So, basically it is a book aimed at website owners rather than web designers. That said, I think there is a lot of useful content in for web designers as well.

Content includes...

Secrets to a successful website
Defining roles and evaluating objectives
Planning and measuring your success
Page design and branding
Layout challenges
Creating killer content
User testing
Content management systems
Web design best practices
Domains and hosting
Website promotion explained
Techniques for engaging visitors

All useful stuff, whatever your job title. What is more it shows web designers how to better communicate with clients. In particular it helps define the role of the client. I can imagine this is a book many web designers will end up buying for their more 'challenging' clients.

The news: Get early access to chapters

Of course most of this you already knew. The interesting part is that you can now read and contribute to the first 5 chapters of the book.

The thing I love about Manning (my publisher) is that they run something called MEAP (Manning Early Access Program). The aim of this program is to engage the reader in the process of writing the book. Think of it as user generated writing.

For between $23 - $40 you can join the program and gain access to all of the chapters as they are written. You will also get the final book when it is released.

Each chapter is released in a very rough and ready form including all my horrible, badly drawn, sketches. You can read each chapter and make suggestions, corrections and comments via the books own private forum. I will be checking it regularly and working with you to improve the book.

What a bloody brilliant idea!

So if you fancy getting involved go to the Manning website (yes it is horribly designed!).

There is even chapter one waiting for you free of charge.

Comments

Comments are for the discussion of this post. If you have other questions / comments then post them to the forum or send me an email

Post by Ewan on June 5, 2008 9:11 PM

I can think of four or five of our clients off the top of my head who despite our telling, just do not listen to us when we advise them how to manage their website. Perhaps I should be nice and buy them all a copy, so they don't ruin their once nicely designed sites!!
Post by Jerry on June 6, 2008 2:00 PM

Hey that is impressive - It is inevitable that publishers will need to follow the social model of interaction with customers (or readers in this case)

Great to see!
Post by Funkyg on June 7, 2008 1:21 PM

I skimmed through the first chapter and quite liked what I saw. However I have a couple of comments on how I do things as a website manager.

Firstly, I actually do think we should be looking at technologies on the web and what they are capable, and how that can affect future development. For example we developed http://www.ausrackid.com more than 2.5 years ago now (starting 3.5 years ago) because I could see that this was possible. We are now looking at a couple of AIR applications which I would not have been had I not taken the time to look at how the technology was changing.

Secondly, you seemed to have missed out analysing the site. This is a major part of seeing if the site is meeting it's objectives, and even if it is could it potentially be pushed to more. I know you favour a continually updating site, rather than a site redesign every few years, and by correctly analysing your site, that is what you are pushed to do. For example one of the sites I run, is exceeding its objectives, but after running tests over a period of about 6 months, I know that I can generate a minimum of 250% more leads. My trouble with making these changes is more to develop a back end to cope with it!

Third and lastly, copy writing, is this the sole responsibility of the website manager? I am pretty sure you don't think so, and to be honest I don't think so either in the vast majority of cases. I'll give you an example why.

Another of the sites I run is about to launch a power distribution unit (pdu) for a rack. This has some fancy new features and they would like to call it an rcu (rack control unit). However look for the rcu term in keyword tools and you get pretty much nothing. On the other hand, there are terms such as 'switched pdu' which mean the same get a good amount of traffic and are relatively easy to optimise for. Obviously if the guy writing this piece has his way, the result will be virtually no search engine traffic. Therefore the web design firm (or in this case me) should be saying, yes you can write that page, but lets write another that is likely to get some search engine traffic.

My feeling over all is that the best approach is the client writing notes, a web design (or SEO) firm looking at search engine implications, the content of the page being arrived at, and this setting the navigation for the site.

Wow, this was a longer post than I thought! Hope it's helpful, or food for thought at the least!
Post by Ken on June 12, 2008 1:30 AM

Looks very promising, Paul! Write like the wind.

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