Best Practices for Managing Large Websites
Are you the owner of a huge website?
Then you know for sure that it is super-difficult to manage large websites properly. To keep a huge website running smoothly, you have to be almost a superhero — but it can be done if you know the secret tricks.
We offer you the top tips for managing large websites that will always be relevant. Do you have any questions for us? Then contact our website maintenance company.
What is a "large" website?
Before going to the top tips to run large websites, we would like to define what sites are considered huge. Actually, this question is rather subjective — for some, a 50-page site is already big, but for some, it is one with 5000 pages.
In order to somehow draw a line between them, it is generally accepted that large sites are most often those run by:
- governments
- universities
- enterprises
The support and management of such large sites should be carried out by a team of designers and developers to ensure correct operation.
Tips For Managing Large Websites
Ever wondered how to manage huge websites?
If your site is large and complex, then you should follow these practices or your site management will turn into a chaotic activity.
To the list of huge sites we can include:
- websites of higher education institutions
- sites with a lot of visitors
- websites of companies with a large number of roles
- high traffic sites
- sites with a large database
- eCommerce giants
If you want your large site to be safe, withstand big traffic spikes, maintain a consistent style and be accessible to all users regardless of device type, then you must use these 5 practices to manage large websites effectively.
8 main practices to manage huge websites
1. Pay maximum attention to the site code
Your website code is your main superpower. The cleaner and the better the code, the easier it will be for you to manage and develop your site. Therefore, your developers should think about the code at the beginning, especially if your site is large and contains many different pages and data.
P.s. choose professional web developers, as only they can create clean code.
2. Establish user groups
First of all, find out who your users are, why they visit your site, what they do on it, and how often they use it. With this information, you can understand what roles you should create for them. For example, if we are talking about a university website, then you should create and provide different roles for teachers, students, and administrators.
As a rule, roles are created on sites for new visitors, authors, and administrators. The more successfully you create user roles, the more likely you are to meet their expectations and provide them with a better user experience.
3. Find out the purpose of your site
Why did you create your site? Once you understand the main goals of your website, it becomes easier to manage your huge website.
Any goal can be achieved with the constant development of your site. Keep adding features to your site so you can see what works best. Also, don't forget about web design. After all, the success of your business depends on the level of satisfaction of your users. Increase your website's performance, because there is always room for improvement.
4. Stay organized
Organize all the data on your site so that it can be easily found when needed. Organizing website files is like cleaning a room, and it has a similar purpose.
The bigger your site, the more data you have: different scripts, files, stylesheets, images, etc. Keep backing up and updating your files. Organize related files into folders to build easy navigation for your site's admins.
5. Develop your stylesheet
Use and develop a stylesheet, as it helps maintain the same fonts and spacing on your site. You need to constantly monitor how your site looks after you add content. A lot of text can make your site look weedy, empty and chaotic.
6. Work with the right hosting provider
The hosting provider plays one of the most important roles and affects the operation of any site. It is essential to find the right type of hosting and a reliable hosting provider. Especially when it comes to large sites, it is worth paying attention to scalable hosting plans.
It should withstand large surges in traffic — we are, after all, talking about huge sites. Also, an important point when choosing a hosting provider is the ability to support large-scale sites. Find out all these points at the beginning, so that later you do not have problems.
7. Creating Architecture for Large Websites
When we talk about site architecture, we primarily mean the hierarchy of pages. A clear site structure helps to meet the needs of your users as soon as possible. In simple terms, a well-designed website allows users and search engines to quickly find what they want. This is extremely necessary when it comes to huge sites that have hundreds of pages.
8. Optimize for performance
The site's performance is how fast your site loads after users click on a link. Users don't like sites that load slowly. They don't care if it's a big site or its peak traffic hours are right now. In order not to deceive visitors, you can use the following main ways to speed up a large site:
- implement caching
- use CDN
- optimize all your images
Manage large websites with the Drudesk web developers
There is often the temptation to manage a large website yourself, but this is not a good idea. Why is this a bad idea?
Professional web designers and web developers already know all the nuances of working with huge sites. They feel how best to do and help it on a subconscious level. It can take you months to do the same. In that amount of time, your site can break.
By following the aforementioned practices, you can be sure that your site will continue to grow and bring you even greater profits. Choose experts to manage a huge website.