Timothy
Parker Consulting Incorporated
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Managing your Web server The last few columns we've looked at setting up your own Web server using Windows 95, Windows NT, UNIX, or Linux. You've got a server laying about connected to your Internet Service Provider, you've got your home pages already designed, and you're on-line. (We haven't mentioned the process of Web page design yet in this series, because I'm waiting until we've looked at Web hosting services in the next column. After that, we look at designing your own Web home page in a little detail.) With your on-line presence firmly embedded in the Internet, all you have to do is sit back, relax, and let the world beat a path to your server, right? Not quite. One of the more mundane aspects of running your own Web server is managing your system. Depending on how you've set up your Web site, this may be a minimal amount needed every week, or it may require more time every day. The basic management tasks fall into a number of categories: managing the server itself, managing the Web pages, and managing client feedback. Managing the client feedback is the easiest to tackle, so we'll do it first. Most Web pages have an e-mail or comments option that allows someone visiting your site to leave comments or queries. If you are selling product or offering services over the Internet, customers must either call you on the telephone or use the Internet as a means of contact. In most cases, this means they leave you e-mail. While most reseller sites are not going to generate huge amounts of e-mail, you will likely get some. A quick poll of VARs already on-line shows that for small resellers (sales less than $1 million) the number of e-mails per day is only two or three, mostly asking for price quotations. Slightly larger VARs (sales of $5 million or less) get about three times as much e-mail per day, which still isn't a huge amount. Of course, if you're running a major reseller business, your traffic will be higher. Since most of the customer e-mail is related to potential sales, you should answer it regularly. I recommend daily checking of the e-mail accounts, and prompt replies. A customer waiting a couple of weeks for you to get back to them is not going to have a very good impression of your service. So, speed is the essence. You don't need to be verbose in your replies, but you should be succinct, clear, and helpful. Many e-mails ask similar questions, so boilerplate material (price lists, service details, company contacts, etc) can be a huge timesaver. For example, if the customer is asking about what you bundle with a particular system, you can usually handle all these queries with pre-written blurbs that are pasted into the reply. Other common e-mail requests are for service on a purchased product, and these should also be handled promptly and as helpfully as possible. After all, if they've been a client once, they most likely will be again unless you give them a bad impression. Managing the server itself means making sure the system is running at its peak performance and offering customers fast throughput (at least as fast as possible through your telephone connection to the ISP). Maintenance depends on the operating system, and most can go weeks without any intervention. Personally, I find UNIX-based servers require less regular maintenance than Windows NT based servers, primarily because UNIX was intended to be up and running for long periods of time. There are automated routines that clean up disks, empty temporary file areas, and manage swap space properly embedded into most UNIX and Linux versions. You do need to understand the operating system, of course, but you don't have to be a guru by any means. Any decent UNIX System Administration manual or book will help out. Windows NT often needs frequent reboots (once a week or so) to clean up the system properly. These can be automated but are best done manually. Since a reboot takes only a couple of minutes, this isn't a major service outage (although you should time your reboots so no-one is on your server!). Managing disk space and memory is a little ore friendly with Windows NT than UNIX, but there are also more management tasks required. Finally, managing the Web pages themselves means making sure the pages change on a regular basis. Having the same information displayed every time a client visits usually means they'll stop visiting. Even if the changes are small, such as featured items or sale information, a change every now and again makes the site look fresh. The effort involved can be minimal, and a weekly change can require only fifteen minutes of your time. It's worth it just so the customer lingers at your site just a little longer to see what you have to say. |
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