Portability
Portability is an issue that
affects many aspects of your domain. It may come to a point were things will
have to be moved around in your organisation, for various reasons. Perhaps
your server is down, or you are simply upgrading to a newer better machine
to cope with an increased load. Your site has to be designed in such a
manner that it can be "lifted" and placed in another location. It is
important to ensure a certain degree of portability within your site. Will
your various scripts, forms, animations, movies, sounds etc, run on a new
server platform? Will it perform as reliably as before on an upgraded
version of the current platform? There is possibly no way to fully know the
answers to these questions, because new hardware and software is being
designed everyday, and there is no way that we can legislate for the odd
failure.
However, there is still much
that can be done. Research and testing is required to be carried out
regarding the choice of hardware and software when creating your original
site. Knowing what will work and where, often allows us to extrapolate for
the future. When designing and implementing your site, a firm eye ought to
be fixed on the future, in order that you are able to know, to the best of
your ability, what will and wont run across the various technologies.
Remember, nothing in computing remains motionless long enough for the dust
to settle on it.
Organisation is another key
factor. Keeping your site well organised and well documented, will ease the
hassle of moving. If your site is ad-hoc in nature, then great difficulty
will be experienced when trying to move it, and again, when attempting to
reassemble it. Much time will undoubtedly be lost, and there is the
possibility that your site may not run the way it once did. |
