Put anything that changes more than twice a year, such as specials, hours and prices, into fields the owner can edit, and leave layout and code to the designer. Give dated items an end date so they expire.

Last month's cuts on the home page

A butcher shop's home page has a box headed "This week's specials". It still lists a roast and a sausage from January, at January's prices.

The owner knows. Changing the box means emailing the designer, who updates it when there is time, and by then the specials have changed again.

Customers who check the site before driving over ask at the counter for cuts that are long gone, and quietly stop believing the opening hours too.

Content that lives in the code

When the site was built, the specials were written into the template, the file that lays out the home page. To a visitor they look like content. To the site, they are part of the design.

Anything stored that way can only be changed by someone who edits the template, usually the designer, working on the server rather than through the owner's login.

So it drifts. Nobody is careless; a weekly change has simply been given a process meant for a yearly one.

Where else it happens

The specials box is one example. The same pattern turns up in these places on many small business sites:

The second is the hardest to spot. Words drawn into a photograph cannot be edited at all, only redrawn, and on a phone they shrink until nobody can read them.

What the owner should be able to change

A simple test sorts it out: anything that changes more than twice a year, or carries a date or a price, belongs in the owner's hands.

That covers specials, hours, holiday closures, prices, staff, news, events and most photographs. Visitors check these parts most, and they go stale first.

The layout, the navigation, the logo, colours and type, and the code behind forms and tracking stay with the designer. Those change rarely, and a slip there can break every page.

Building it editable from the start

An editable box is a design decision, made before any code is written. The specials get their own place in the editing screens, with labelled fields for the item, the price and the last day of the offer.

The template reads those fields and lays them out. The owner fills in a form, and the design takes care of the fonts, spacing and colours.

WordPress, Joomla and Drupal each have ways to do this, through widgets, modules, blocks or custom fields. Which suits a given site is the designer's call.

Limits that protect the design

Owners worry, reasonably, that editing will spoil the layout. Good editable areas are built so it cannot: a short title with a character limit, a price field that takes only a price, photographs cropped to size on upload.

The owner changes words and pictures while the structure stays put. That is what makes handing over the editing safe for both sides.

A worked example

A small pickle maker sells jars at three farmers' markets and through a few delis, from a commercial kitchen it rents by the day.

Its home page had a box listing this week's markets and the seasonal jars. The designer had built it into the template, so every change went by email, and the box often showed markets already past.

Regular customers turned up at the wrong market more than once, and some stopped trusting the box altogether.

The box was rebuilt as an editable list. Each market entry has a date, a place and hours, and disappears by itself once its date has passed.

The seasonal jars became a short list the owner edits from the kitchen, while the designer kept control of how both lists look.

The dated entries expire on their own, so the box cannot fall behind. A box that empties itself is never wrong, only short, and a short box reminds the owner to add the next market.

End dates that clear stale content

The markets list shows the most useful idea in this whole area: give anything time-sensitive an end date, and let the site take it down.

Specials end on a Sunday. A holiday closure notice ends the day the shop reopens. An event drops off once it has happened.

The designer can also add a fallback for an empty box, such as a line saying when the next specials go up, so the page never looks abandoned.

A named person and a short guide

An editable box nobody knows how to edit is no better than a locked one. Before launch, the owner should make a real change on a real page, with the designer beside them.

A one-page guide with screenshots, kept where staff can find it, covers the day someone new takes over the job.

Name the person who updates the box, and the day of the week they do it. Editing access with no one responsible drifts just as surely as a locked box.

The counter-case

Some owners would rather not edit anything, and send changes to the designer as part of a monthly maintenance plan. That works well when the turnaround is agreed and quick.

Weekly content is the exception. It needs someone on the spot, and the person behind the counter knows the specials before anyone else does.

Leaving layout and code to professionals is right. Leaving this week's prices with them only adds a delay between the counter and the website.

Handing the specials to the shop

  1. List every part of the site that changes.
  2. Mark anything with a date or a price.
  3. Move those parts into editable fields.
  4. Give each field a limit and a format.
  5. Add end dates to anything time-sensitive.
  6. Make a real change before launch.
  7. Name the person who updates it each week.

Step five keeps the box honest. Owners sometimes forget to update it, and an end date means a forgotten special disappears instead of misleading customers at the counter.

An events calendar showing an empty month applies the same thinking to dates, where a plain list of what is coming beats a month grid that looks idle.

Frequently asked questions

Why can only the designer change part of my site?

Because it was written into the template, the file that lays out the page, rather than stored as content you edit. Only someone who edits the template can change it.

Which parts of a website should the owner edit?

Anything that changes more than twice a year or carries a date or a price: specials, hours, holiday notices, prices, staff, news, events and most photographs.

What should stay with the designer?

The layout, navigation, logo, colours and type, and the code behind forms and tracking. These change rarely, and a mistake there can break pages across the whole site.

Will editing the site spoil the design?

Not if the editable areas are built with limits: a character limit on titles, a format for prices, photographs cropped to size. You change the words while the structure stays put.

How do I stop old specials staying online?

Give each special, notice or event an end date and have the site remove it automatically, with a short fallback line for the days when nothing is current.

Is a maintenance plan enough for updates?

For monthly or yearly changes, often yes, if the turnaround is agreed. Weekly content such as specials is better edited by the person who knows the specials first.

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.

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