Book review: The Website Manager’s Handbook

 – posted September 26th, 2006 by Brian Donohue     One comment

It’s not often someone from Ireland writes a book about the web. Gerry McGovern of course has done it, a couple times, and it’s helped to establish his international reputation as a web content expert.

Now Shane Diffily, a web manager in ESB has entered the public fray. Shane set himself an ambitious goal—he’s tried to capture almost everything a web manager should know in one concise volume (373 pages, to be exact)—it’s called the Website Manager Handbook.

It’s a good sign when someone says they wrote a book because they needed it. As Shane says, “It was my own difficulty in finding advice on such items that prompted me to write this book”. So this isn’t a vanity exercise (“I’ve always felt I had a book in me”), but a reaction to a genuine hole in the market.

And I agree with Shane—there really isn’t any one book that puts together all the pieces that a web manager needs to know (at least that I know about). For example, O’Reilly has published a book called Webmaster In a Nutshell. O’Reilly is a great publisher, and this title sounds promising, but the book focuses exclusively on technology (JavaScript, HTTP, PHP, Apache, etc).

A book that can pull together the prevailing wisdom on all things a web manager needs to worry about, not just the technology, is a valuable tome indeed.

Critically, this book is not aimed at developers. It’s written for non-techies who are perhaps quietly concerned about their lack of understanding of what they’re supposed to be managing. You know, the manager who nods knowingly when a developer tries to explain why they can’t make their web site display properly in Firefox, and walks away without understanding a single word the developer said. I think Shane’s hope is that with this book, the manager will at least be confident enough to ask: “Well why aren’t we coding with web standards?”

So does his book do the job?

Well, yes and no. This book’s strength is also its weakness: it covers an impressive breadth of content, but at the expense of depth and quality of insight.

What’s good about the book

The book’s biggest strength is packaging together all the issues that a web manager should at least be familiar with. From website hosting, to content management systems, to accessibility and usability, to development tools, and testing processes, and even the key roles every web team should have. It’s comprehensive.

And when discussing web team roles, I was particularly happy to see how he differentiated between designers (who specify a site’s form and function) and developers (who code the website to follow that blueprint). Too often, managers assume these skills are the same.

Shane also notes the importance of having a web editor—someone who actually oversees the quality of content on the site. Again, this is an often-overlooked role.

And another suggestion he makes is the appointment of a website management team. It may sound obvious, but it’s often lacking in clients we’ve worked with.

He also often mentions specific products and prices that you should consider for various tasks. For example, he lists products you can use for website QA (bad links, excessive page sizes, etc.)

Where I think it falls short

The superficial coverage of many topics is frustrating. I was particularly interested when I came across his discussion on the semantic web. I’ve always had just a vague notion of what it means. But his page-and-a-half description did little to shed any more light on the topic for me.

Another example of this light coverage is his discussion of CMSs (or WCM - web content management – in Shane’s terms.) CMSs are a major decision for every web manager, and one that frequently results in disappointment and frustration. We’ve seen it time and time again. Shane takes 4 pages to discuss CMSs, and does little more than offer categories of sophistication and price. There are many questions left unanswered. Or rather, they’re left unasked. (Such as: Why do so many CMSs fail to deliver on their promises? Does more money buy you a better system, or just more features you don’t really need? How should I figure out which one is best for me?)

A lot of what Shane covers in this book is not controversial, nor does he provide a particularly opinionated version of topics (though I think the value of books likes this comes from the presence and value of opinions). And he occasionally resorts to saying things that seem quite self-evident: “What will normally be found is that a site that contains a lot of frequently updated features will need more staff than one that is home to only a few, static pages”.

All the same, there are many conclusions he draws that I disagree with. For example, he says that website activity (that is, the volume of traffic it receives) is possibly the most important factor when planning manpower requirements. I don’t follow that logic at all. Instead it seems clearly that the most important factor is the frequency of content and design updates required for your site.

I was delighted to see his discussion of the importance of web analytics, and his emphasis on determining success criteria for a site. But in his discussion of web analytics applications, he concludes that web-based apps are “most suited to highly resourced sites where detailed analysis is required”. I would argue the exact reverse. He also describes web analytics as a “black-art”, and in just two paragraphs of discussion of search engine optimisation, he effectively dismisses it as a “dark art”. Both characterisations are dangerously misleading. (Dangerous that is, if they persuade you to ignore them.)

But with a book of this ambition, it’s inevitable he’ll say things some will disagree with. You simply can’t be an expert on all of these topics.

So should you buy it?

Overall, I may disagree with his analysis of some situations, and the lack of depth is a real problem. Nevertheless, the breadth of content covered makes it very likely that most readers will learn something new here. I certainly did. And I can think of plenty of clients for whom this book would be a great primer on all the considerations of what it takes to successfully run a website. And with a price of just 16 euros, I’d hope to see this book on a lot of people’s shelves.

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