Website maintenance

Last week, I received a lengthy mail from Okon, who has became interested in creating a website of his own after few visits to the CFA section on my wiki. As I strive to turn every efforts I put into this site and any respective, useful tips into publicly available information, I would like to take this opportunity to provide a more comprehensive guideline by posting the following QnAs.

1) How much times do you spend managing the page?

Well, it depends on how much stuff I need to update within particular time period. No time is spent on actual managing part; however, time it takes for content creation can vary from half an hour for blog posting to weeks on applying a new theme. So, to break down according to routinely updates I make.
* Blog: 2-3 posts per week, yielding approximately 6 hours/month
* Photo albums: 3-4 pages per month, 4 hours/month
* Wiki: depends on development/learning events being taken, ~10 hours/month
* Et cetera: such as site restructuring, application package upgrade, new features addition, ~5 hours/month.
So, that comes out to be roughly 25 hours per month.

2) Can I manage the my page effectively as you do yours with any programming experience except VBA?

As you could refer from the INFO page, my website is driven by four different services: wordpress, mediawiki, iWeb and google apps. The pages on this website are largely comprised of HTML, CSS and PHP. These are all fairly simple languages, and most of the time, you won't need any knowledge in programming experience. But if you wish to apply some unique looks or features to your site, and utility is not the only thing that matters, general programming knowledge definitely will save you some time.

3) Would you be open to guiding me through setting up a similar page for myself and working me through a maintenance tutorial that may be necessary?

It took me three years to get me this far, and even if I were to replicate a site looking just like this, I believe it is not something that can be done within a month or so. Going back to your question, I would be happy to share any beneficial information if you make a suggestion in regards to an information as a visitor of this site. However, if the question pertains to your own matter, I am sorry I cannot help you on that part.

4) How much does it cost you annually to maintained the page?

* Domain(GoDaddy): $8/year
* Hosting(GoDaddy): $5/month
* Google apps integration: free
* Design/Programming labor: priceless
Annual expense: approximately 68 USD a year.

5) You may also provide any other information you think may be helpful.

Since it opened up in 2007, the site has gone through series of major reconstructions. Looking back from now, I think it was mostly because my intentions had changed over time and it took me some time to figure out what sort of contents I want to put up on my site and how to sort them out. So, if anyone plans on creating a site looking like this, I would suggest, first think about your goals, what sort of information or media you will be providing, and have a list of sections sorted out, in order of importance, before getting started on anything. For example, blog and wiki are similar in function, that they serve to create simple pages. Not everyone necessarily needs to setup a wiki unless one has massive text data which need to be edited constantly.

So, that is pretty much all I have to say for now. Feel free to get back to me for simple questions or general consulting on this matter.

Okon, hope this info. helps, and thanks again as I were able to look back into works I had done, and take a time to analyze them.