Friday, May 08, 2009
Changing an email or phone number - updating websites
I look after our village website, and received a frustrated email from the administrator of an organisation. The village website had their old email and phone details, and it was causing problems.
They don't have a website of their own (silly them), so they rely on other peoples' websites to provide contact details. The person who contacted me seemed to feel that it was my failing in not having checked that their information was still correct. That's a reasonable expectation for links to web pages - where there is automatic software available that can scan every link on a site for broken links.
But there is no automatic way to check that Mr Sproggins hasn't changed his mobile number, and that his email address hasn't changed. And it seems a bit much to expect that a webmaster should check every piece of information (how often?) to make sure it hasn't changed. That would be a bit like a phone system without bells - where you were expected to pick up the receiver every few minutes in case there was someone wanting to talk to you.
It's much more realistic to expect that the information SUBJECT should take responsibility for contacting those whose websites are showing the OLD information. And that isn't as tricky as it seems.
Step One is to do a Google Search for the old data item. So if Mr Sproggins has changed his mobile number from 0789 0123 456, then Google for "0789 0123 456" OR "0789 0123456" (the whole lot - with both sets of quotes and the OR in capitals: it does matter!).
Note - Google treat phone numbers simply as text strings, so spacing does matter. You need to include each of the common spacings for your number (perhaps also "078 9012 3456") to catch all examples.
Some entries listed by Google will be historic (eg postings to discussion groups which are of no current relevance) but for those which are ongoing, the subject can then contact the webmaster with new information.
Step Two is to keep vigilant for NEW promulgation of the old information. Someone writes a webpage and picks up the old details from printed information or someone else's out-of-date website. And if you don't catch it, that old information will be out on the web to be found and re-quoted. The trick here is to set up a Google Alert on the old information (use the same search string as above) - so that Google send you an email every time their robots come across an instance of the old data.
You may be surprised how long it takes before people stop quoting the old information!
They don't have a website of their own (silly them), so they rely on other peoples' websites to provide contact details. The person who contacted me seemed to feel that it was my failing in not having checked that their information was still correct. That's a reasonable expectation for links to web pages - where there is automatic software available that can scan every link on a site for broken links.
But there is no automatic way to check that Mr Sproggins hasn't changed his mobile number, and that his email address hasn't changed. And it seems a bit much to expect that a webmaster should check every piece of information (how often?) to make sure it hasn't changed. That would be a bit like a phone system without bells - where you were expected to pick up the receiver every few minutes in case there was someone wanting to talk to you.
It's much more realistic to expect that the information SUBJECT should take responsibility for contacting those whose websites are showing the OLD information. And that isn't as tricky as it seems.
Step One is to do a Google Search for the old data item. So if Mr Sproggins has changed his mobile number from 0789 0123 456, then Google for "0789 0123 456" OR "0789 0123456" (the whole lot - with both sets of quotes and the OR in capitals: it does matter!).
Note - Google treat phone numbers simply as text strings, so spacing does matter. You need to include each of the common spacings for your number (perhaps also "078 9012 3456") to catch all examples.
Some entries listed by Google will be historic (eg postings to discussion groups which are of no current relevance) but for those which are ongoing, the subject can then contact the webmaster with new information.
Step Two is to keep vigilant for NEW promulgation of the old information. Someone writes a webpage and picks up the old details from printed information or someone else's out-of-date website. And if you don't catch it, that old information will be out on the web to be found and re-quoted. The trick here is to set up a Google Alert on the old information (use the same search string as above) - so that Google send you an email every time their robots come across an instance of the old data.
You may be surprised how long it takes before people stop quoting the old information!
Labels: "email links", "updating web"
# posted by John Geddes @ 8:12 am 
