Creating a sustainable website

Published on 6^th December 2008 in Websites, tagged sustainability, Thunderbolt.

Creating a successful website is difficult, but getting it to a postion you’re happy with is only half the battle; you also have to make that website sustainable. Thunderbolt had its eighth birthday recently and every year I find myself almost wondering how it’s survived for so long. Eight years isn’t a long time, but in terms of the Internet, it’s eons. Many websites don’t last, even the best. Take IdleThumbs for example; it was a fantastic games site, but then they just stopped producing content and it’s only recently returned as a podcast. So what have I learnt from my experience of Thunderbolt and what can you do to make your website sustainable?

Have a long-term goal and stick to it

“Where do you want to be in five years’ time?” is a common interview question and it can just as easily apply to websites. Before you make decisions that could affect your site’s future, like the art direction of a redesign, you need to know where you want to take the site. Identify a niche, a target audience or a position relative to your competitors and then set your course based on that. You’ve got to be flexible, but having a long-term plan can be a massive help when it comes to decision making.

Don’t be afraid to get rid of unsustainable parts of your website

We covered videogames news for years at Thunderbolt, partly because it was common practice to do so. Yet no-one ever came to write for us because of the news and I doubt anyone really enjoyed doing it as much as writing reviews. The onslaught of press releases and announcements was relentless; you could never keep up without full-time staff. It became a chore and so when I redesigned the site in April, I cut the news section loose. It was a big decision, but it’s one that I’ll never regret. Since then, we’ve had more time to focus on what we enjoy; writing reviews and features. Thunderbolt feels leaner and it’s given us another way to differentiate ourselves from other videogames websites.

Make sure it’ll work without you

You might think “this website won’t run itself”, but that’s exactly what it has to do. If you went on holiday for three weeks without Internet access, would your site still be functioning when you got back? If you’re not sure that it would, it’s a sign that it might not be sustainable. I’m fortunate enough to have an awesome team of editors and writers at Thunderbolt who are more than capable of keeping the site running at full pace in my absence. I’ve been away travelling for thirteen months of the last three years and each time I’ve come back, it’s still been there as if I’d never left. So when you’re building as site, consider what might happen in your absence. If you create content, ensure that your other writers can cope or if you have some form of community site, make sure that you won’t be overrun with moderation and support requests.

There’s more to making a website sustainable than these three points, but if you consider them when you start, you’ll be much better off in the future. Having a long-term plan has certainly been a help to me in recent years, so it might work for you too. After all, you never know what’s around the next corner, but knowing where that corner is can help.