The Tasks of Managing a Web Site

The tasks of managing a Web site have a lot in common with the normal duties of a system administrator. They include installation an maintenance of software, overseeing system security, and helping users with problems. As well as setting up and maintaining a network connection, managing a Web site also involves:

• Setting up and configuring the server.
  After the sever software has been installed, it needs to be configured and fine-turned for optimum performance. Security issues must be addressed, and access schemes for non-public data set up.

• Log file management.
  Log files provide users and administrators with important feedback on which documents are popular. however, on a large site log files tend to grow very quickly, and thus must be truncated or archived at regular intervals. Usually, a stastics summary is generated before removing the log files and hept on-line for a longer period of time.

• Providing usage charts.
  Both remote users and local information-providers may be interested in stastics and usage charts, which can be automatically generated and mapped into the server's document space.

• Setting up seachable repostitories.
  Information usually has to be prepared before it can be made accessible.

• Running automatic consistency checkers.
  Documents can contain hypertext links to other information and it is important to verify the correctness of these links.
  

• Setting up dynamic enhancements.
  Handling forms and interfacing to database systems and existing information services usually requires server extensions.