The Great Web Maintainability Survey Results

Published on Jun 16, 2017 (updated Jul 8, 2023), filed under development, maintainability. (Share this post, e.g., on Mastodon.)

Four weeks ago I started a survey about good and bad practices when it comes to the maintenance and maintainability of websites (A List Apart and others reported—thank you!). Participation was amazing given the open nature of the questions, and here are the first results.

That is, indeed, just a spreadsheet at the moment, however it’s what I’m now going to take apart and, sheet by sheet, normalize and transform into a new guide on maintainability. You can follow my work in that spreadsheet (perhaps even live) or get updates on new documentation through the usual channels, like one of the meiert.com feeds, on Twitter on Mastodon, and also on Google+.

Oh—whether the result will something to be called “great,” I don’t know; the feedback, from what I can tell, can. Many thanks to everyone who contributed!

Update (January 24, 2018)

Thanks to everyone’s feedback, here is: The Compact Guide to Web Maintainability: 200 Tips and Resources.

About Me

I’m Jens (long: Jens Oliver Meiert), and I’m an engineering lead, guerrilla philosopher, and indie publisher. I’ve worked as a technical lead and manager at various companies (e.g., Google); I’m an active web and tool developer (code optimization, digital defense), a contributor to web standards (like HTML, CSS, WCAG), and a book author (O’Reilly, dxsrc). Stay in touch.