It is a truism that every web site requires a web master. No matter how plug and play is your Ollie setup, there are routine maintenance procedures that should be followed. These generally fall into two broad categories: System and Human:

System Management

These tasks fall can be classified as follows: Periodically monitoring web server performance:
· Metrics such as:

• How many sessions are running?
• The average number of sessions running?
• The maximum number of sessions running?
• Disk space being used?
• Memory being used?
• Who is logging in (and from where!)?

All these can be checked in your IIS and Windows Event logs. In fact, you can easily set up to be alerted whenever certain parameters are being exceeded, such as
· Do there seem to be any rogue sessions—sessions which are from suspicious users or which have been inadvertently left running?
Running periodic maintenance procedures on your server
· Defragging your server hard drives
· Resetting your web services. This is a good idea to do periodically as it flushes memory which gives your web services something of a ‘fresh start’.
· Backing up your data!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (there aren’t enough exclamation points for this one.) We could spend an hour on this, but for Ollie’s sake, at a minimum you should be backing up:

• The entire Simple Accounting folder, including all subfolders
• The folder where your SQL Server databases are located (Don’t know where that is? Then ask!!!! It’s your data!)
• A complete backup of your server. If possible this should be done using an Imaging Utility such as Norton Ghost™ or PowerQuest DriveRestore™. This type of backup makes an exact duplicate of your disk to DVD so that you can immediately restore if your server hard disk is destroyed.
• A Windows Emergency Rescue Disk. This can be used to re-boot your server to a last know good point in case of some problem which is preventing Windows from booting properly.

Keeping your system software up to date, including:
· Server software
· Anti-virus
· Anti-spyware
· Firewall

It Ain’t Rocket Science…
There is a myth, often espoused by people who make their living selling computer services, but
just as often propagated by ‘computer-phobes’ that all this is beyond the capacity of small companies to handle in-house. While some of these procedures may be new territory for you, none require the services of a ‘professional’ and none require more than a few minutes of effort per day. Our advice is, if you can, do it yourself and only bring in a networking professional for setup and or big troubleshooting issues. That said, as we said before, you simply must have the phone number of a quality networking specialist available in the event of an emergency. This is not optional!
That said, those few minutes per day are essential and you are advised to make certain that you delegate someone to learn these skills and then execute the above tasks faithfully. Your business depends upon it!
SOME RESOURCES
Besides us, the aforementioned network specialist can also provide suggestions for learning what
you need to know to perform these tasks and many will happily provide hands on training at a quite nominal cost. Additionally, we recommend the following:
1. Your Windows Server Documentation. There is an amazing amount of very well written documentation and step by step tutorials available right at your server console. Topics relevant to our task list include:
a. How to use the built-in defragger

b. Monitoring the IIS and Server Event Logs c. Cancelling IIS sessions
d. Setting up new network accounts e. The built-in backup utility
f. Restarting IIS
g. Creating an Emergency Rescue Disk
2. www.microsoft.com In addition to the built-in help system, you would be amazed at how much information you can here. A favorite spot is the series of forums where you can get personal answers to your questions by Microsoft pros as well as other users: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/expertzone/newsgroups.mspx
3. The documentation included with your backup software, and other utilities such as anti- virus, anti-spyware and firewall. (The good news is that you rarely will need to reference these once they are set up.

4. The Windows Secrets Newsletter (<span >www.windowssecrets.com) This electronic newsletter, published by renowned Windows columnist Brian Livingston contains weekly tips on how to run Windows safely—including warnings on security bugs, unbiased product recommendations and techniques for keeping your system up to date the right way. It is a must read for all computer administrators.

User/Site Management

Handling user issues can be generally divided into two classes
1. Site issues: those where the site is not responding as expected.
a. Is the web server responding? (You might try rebooting the server or IIS if not.)
b. Is there a problem with your ISP? (Do you have your ISP’s phone number on speed dial?)
c. Is there an issue with the way Ollie is responding? (In which case, of course, contact Suntower Systems!)
2. User management a. Reactive
i. Is there a rogue order in the system (an order which does not belong)?
ii. Resetting User passwords and permissions.
iii. Are there suspicious sessions? (try saying that five times fast) These are sessions which have been active longer than expected (eg. more than an hour) or which have an unfamiliar IP address.

You can learn how to automatically be alerted for these by reading up on your IISdocumentation.

b. Ongoing
i. Uploading new content, including new PDF template, image previews. ii. Setting up new users.
iii. Providing training for your personnel and your end Users.
Some HR Advice On Your Webmaster…
Some unasked for advice on the person you select to manage your web site.
TIME IS FLEETING!
Hopefully you can see that the person responsible for your web site will also need to be able to
respond quick to reactive tasks, but also have the necessary time to perform ongoing tasks as well. We’re not saying that ‘webmaster’ needs to be a full-time position; for most of our clients this is far from the case. However, this person must have the flexibility to respond to user needs quickly. In other words, this position cannot be an afterthought if you’re to have happy Users. It would be best to think of this person as a webmaster who usually has time for other tasks, rather than as a <fill in the blank> who just happens to run your web site. Trust us: that mindset is a recipe for disaster.
QUALITIES
The person you want in this position needs to be multi-talented. From the above discussion it
should be clear that this individual should have some knowledge about how your computers
work, how SAFE and Ollie work and how your business runs. That’s a lot of knowledge! And on top of that, you want someone with some people skills since they will be dealing with Users who will usually only be contacting them when there is a problem. And remember: those Users probably don’t like computers as much as your webmaster. So again, don’t consider your webmaster as an afterthought—for most of our clients, they are as important to business success as any salesperson and should be treated with similar respect.
Oh, and one final note: notice that, among all the qualifications we listed above, nowhere is there mention of ‘graphic arts’ or ‘web designer’. We’ve noticed that a lot of our clients will look to budding web designers, or employees looking to develop such skills, when attempting to find a webmaster. We feel that this is a mistake. In fact, ‘design’ will likely play a very small role in the job. It is far better to find someone with accuracy, people skills and a willingness to learn, than someone with a high ‘creativity factor’. While your webmaster will occasionally be called upon
to work with images, these tasks are fairly routine.