Web

When you've gone live

Evaluate your Project

Check the goals and objectives for your site. What was delivered successfully? What was dropped? Is there anything that was dropped that could now be implemented? Are there areas on the site that could be expanded?

Does your division have best practice guidelines for how to present information? Make sure that any documentation you write for your website is consistent with them and any University-wide rules or guidelines.
If your division makes use of a house style, ensure your pages follow it. Make sure it is circulated to everyone responsible for publishing on the site.
Who will have access to publish content on the site?
Who will sign off pages before they go live?
Who owns the content? Check for any copyright issues when using third party content such as images and text, and credit sources where necessary.
What file format should someone use when submitting content for the Web?
If you need to show someone a preview of pages before they go live, how will this be handled? Do you have a development area, or will you have to put pages live without any links in order to view them?
If you have a publishing system (CMS for example) allowing content creators to log in and make their own content, what guidelines should they follow?
If your site is in XHTML Strict for example, do content creators know that HTML tags like <BR> should be in lower case, and self-closing (</br>)? Do they know they should be validating their pages?

Check that the flow of new and updated content on the site is being maintained?
Organise your information into directories if you are planning more than a few pages. This will make your site easier to manage as it expands.
Update the homepage regularly, to keep the site looking fresh.
Make a schedule for checking certain aspects on the site, such as the rights on paid images.
Link to central resources wherever possible to ensure that information is kept up to date.
Analyse the 'web metrics' such as server log file statistics or Google Analytics. They are an invaluable source of information about your site visitors - what they are looking for, search words they are using, how they navigate through the site and where they are based around the world.
Decide how to archive pages.

Make sure you are prominently linked from relevant university or non-university websites.
It can take time for search engines such as Google to index your pages, as a result you may not appear in search results for some time. When you do, assess the quality of the indexed information as you may need to tweak key text like titles and opening page paragraphs. Include words and phrases within your text that your target audience would use, especially within the headings and first few paragraphs. This will help your pages to appear in search engine results and reassure the reader that they're looking at the right page.
Look at other ways of promoting your site, such as email marketing and printed publications.