Therefore, planning on a way to keep your Web site up to date is an essential part of the development process. How this is accomplished will most likely be determined by the type of information your site displays, your technology skill level and, of course, your budget.

In general, those three factors will determine one of three general ways to accomplish regular updates ˜ hand-editing html code, making changes to pages with a "what you see is what you get" (WYSIWYG) html page editor or using a custom interface for your specific needs.

Of course, each option has its own set of pros and cons, which I will discuss those in the follow paragraphs.

The first option is hand editing. The obvious disadvantage here is having to learn html code to know how to accurately edit it. Unless you are a computer-coding hobbyist, this probably won't be helpful to the average business owner.

On the other hand, this option will be the cheapest to develop because there are no special features or software to buy. And, more likely than not, this is the choice a business owner will make if they are going to hand over all updates to a professional developer and are willing to pay for hourly updates instead of taking the time to handle updates on their own.

The bottom line with this option is you will likely save money on the development of your site and save your time on updates but will need to budget extra monthly money to pay to have a professional maintain your site.

Option two is the WYSIWYG editor, which is a software package that provides a visual, word processor-type, interface to the html code. In fact, you can add text and photos or move elements around your page without ever seeing any actual code.

Examples of these editors would be Microsoft FrontPage (www.microsoft.com/frontpage/), Macromedia Dreamweaver (www.macromedia.com) or Adobe GoLive (www.adobe.com).

However, any time you have a software package creating code or making changes to html for you, you run the risk of it making a mistake or undoing an advanced feature it may not understand.

Speaking from experience, while this problem may not sound serious or a major issue, I can tell you that dealing with pages that have been edited with a mediocre WYSIWIG editor can be a major headache.

Plus, these editors rarely create code this is standards-compliant, so you always run the risk of your Web page not displaying or functioning properly on all the possible computer platforms and browser types.

That nice thing about this option is it gives you complete design and editing control over every aspect of your site for just the cost of the software (usually $50 to $300) and your time to learn the program.

If this option appeals to you despite the risks involved with using a WYSIWIG editor, Macromedia has just come out with a new product called Contribute (www.macromedia.com) that is getting very good reviews while still being affordable. So far, it would be my first recommendation for this method of Web maintenance.

And finally, we have option three. For maintaining specific areas of your site or defined types of content, such as a product database, inventory or information archive, a custom interface is by far the best of both worlds.

There are two major negative points to this option, but both have a positive side as well.

The major issue here is the upfront development cost to build a simple interface that will allow a novice computer user to make changes to a potentially very complex database of information. On the other hand, because it is so easy to maintain, your costs will be recouped over time because you won't need to pay an html or database specialist to perform basic daily updates.

The other issue is, while an interface will give you the ability to update specific data or areas of your site, it does not offer complete editing and creative control. But, the upside to this is it prevents a basic user from doing any major damage and only allows them to make changes to areas that have been approved.

On top of these two items, you have many of the other benefits of the other two options, including not having any software to buy, not having to pay a high hourly rate to a specialist to perform basic updates, and all the code that gets built for you remains standards-compliant and consistent across multiple platforms and browser software options.

In the end, the option that is best for maintaining your Web site will depend on your comfort level with complex technology and the type of updates you will need to keep your information up to date and your Web site viewers and customers happy with the content you provide.