Nonprofit web design

When I ask charities about their backup routines, they all know they should backup their documents, their emails and so on but few mention their website. That’s an unfortunate oversight because it’s fairly easy to lose control of your own website and it’s good practice to have backups and documentation to hand – just in case.

I once worked with a charity that fell out with their volunteer web designer. After an argument the designer deleted the entire website then told the charity it was her copyright so she could do as she liked. The charity realised that not only did they have no website, they also had no backup, and they didn’t even have the passwords for the hosting account. The whole site had to be recreated from scratch. That’s not the only worrying scenario: I’ve worked with a charity whose designer died unexpectedly and with several organisations where because of staff changes no-one knew the website passwords any more.

Taking responsibility

If yours is a large website built by a reliable web design agency and there’s a maintenance agreement you should include backups as part of the contract. However, if you have a small website designed by a one-man-band designer, don’t leave the responsibility to them: it’s far better to be self-reliant. An employee should be responsible for documenting and backing up the website and ideally it should be in their job description.

The essential documentation

On purchasing a domain name you should be given a username and password to access a control panel that’s either on your own website or your hosting company’s. These details are usually sent to you in an email immediately after purchase. Without them you will be unable to renew your domain name or set up official email addresses.

When you purchase hosting for your website you typically administer it using the same control panel as for the domain name. But not always, so retain the email the company sends you. The control panel will enable you to see your website visitor statistics and set up FTP access and your web designer may need to use it to set up databases and do a dozen other techie tasks.

The FTP details are important to know: you use them to backup the website and make changes to its design. You’ll need an FTP address (e.g. ftp.yourdomain.org), username and password. These details should be included in the email your hosting company sent you but you can change them at any time using the control panel.

Keep these details as printouts in a file in the office, not just as emails on a computer. If you change passwords, amend the printouts too.

How do you backup a website?

It depends how your website has been designed and how you edit the content.

If your website has a Content Management System (CMS) such as Joomla, WordPress or Mambo, the text on your pages, sub-pages, posts and news items will be stored in a database. There should be a backup facility to export this content as a single file that you save to your computer. If later on you have a problem with your website you might need to import this file. Do this regularly, especially if you often change the site’s content. However, this usually only backs up the written content of your site and not the design itself or any pictures you’ve uploaded.

Whether you have a CMS or not you’ll need to backup of all the website’s files, possibly including:

• .htm – static html pages
• .php or .asp - pages that interact with a database
• .css - the stylesheet containing instructions about fonts, colour, layout and the look and feel of your site
• .pdf & .doc – documents in Adobe Acrobat and Microsoft Word format
• .gif & .jpg – images

The problem is that these files aren’t on your own computer, they’re on your hosting company’s server. You can connect to that server in several ways: FTP client software; web design software such as Dreamweaver; or simply the Internet Explorer browser that’s already on your computer. To do this you’ll need your FTP address, username and password: here’s a simple FTP tutorial.

Keep one copy of your website on your computer; put another copy on CD, write the date on it, and put it in the paper file with your site’s passwords.

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