At the Centennial Museum, we are updating constantly inhouse. Aside from 
the lack of funds to outsource, it would take nearly as much time (or 
possibly more time) to feed the changes and new material to another 
entity. With some thousands of pages in our complex, it is a constant 
chore to keep up. Content varies from educational material (for example, 
well over 1000 pages complementing our "Desert Diary" local PBS daily 
short presentations, now in their 5th year; and our Chihuahuan Desert 
section on natural and cultural history has several thousand pages, 
mostly with information and images concerning Chihuahuan Desert plants 
and animals) to exhibit information to research materials (collection 
databases, checklists of regional animals, CDC keys to mosquito genera, 
extensive material on ants of North America, etc.).

There are drawbacks aside from time constraints. As a university museum, 
we have server space on the university system. However, when the 
university changed server systems, we lost our links on search engines 
and hits dropped by roughly 90%, and recovery has been slow. Would other 
hosting have helped? Possibly, but no guarantee.

Art Harris

Jenna Caroll-Plante wrote:

> Speaking beyond the initial design and hosting fees…. How many 
> institutions with websites update the information in-house or 
> outsource it? What are the pros and cons of each? How often do you 
> update your website? Thanks, Jenna
>
> ========================================================= Important 
> Subscriber Information:
>
> The Museum-L FAQ file is located at 
> http://www.finalchapter.com/museum-l-faq/ . You may obtain detailed 
> information about the listserv commands by sending a one line e-mail 
> message to [log in to unmask] . The body of the message 
> should read "help" (without the quotes).
>
> If you decide to leave Museum-L, please send a one line e-mail message 
> to [log in to unmask] . The body of the message should read 
> "Signoff Museum-L" (without the quotes).
>


-- 
Laboratory for Environmental Biology, Centennial Museum
University of Texas at El Paso, El Paso, TX  79968-0915
[log in to unmask]   http://museum.utep.edu/
http://museum.utep.edu/chih/chihdes.htm 

=========================================================
Important Subscriber Information:

The Museum-L FAQ file is located at http://www.finalchapter.com/museum-l-faq/ . You may obtain detailed information about the listserv commands by sending a one line e-mail message to [log in to unmask] . The body of the message should read "help" (without the quotes).

If you decide to leave Museum-L, please send a one line e-mail message to [log in to unmask] . The body of the message should read "Signoff Museum-L" (without the quotes).