I have often written about how utterly overwhelmed most web managers are. They're not 'managing', they're coping.

Happily, solutions to many issues are shared by peers around the world. It really helps.

I have now built The Website Manager's Agent - an AI assistant for website managers. This AI is based on the hundreds-of-thousands of words from books, blog posts, online articles, presentations and more, that I have written about web management over the last 20 years.

The aim is to lighten the load.

My hope is that it can help web folk to solve the many recurring challenges of digital management and governance. This ranges from web team roles and responsibilities to governance processes and procedures. From content and design decisions to digital strategy. And much more - including the impact of AI itself.

It's the service I wish I'd had when I started out.

Hundreds of thousands of words

I built this AI using a custom GPT from OpenAI, inspired in part by (the much more sophisticated) AskLuke created by Luke Wroblewski.

For the knowledge repository, I added a copy of pretty much everything I have written on the topics of website management, governance, content design, UX, etc, over the last two decades. A full list is below.

Inevitably, the Website Manager's Agent has all the same issues as other Generative AI tools, including hallucinations. I am continuing to refine its responses by adding further instructions and clarifications in the backend.

As an aside, it is a lot 'dumber' in the backend than I expected. The AI often does things I explicitly instruct it not to do, e.g. change prompts or descriptions. It requires a lot of repetition.

That said, my testing so far indicates that the model interprets the source material quite well. By-and-large, it is delivering useful answers - though the language is sometimes cumbersome. If it can't find an answer in the documents provided, it can also search the web.

(Unlike AskLuke, I have not configured it to reply as if in my own voice. Maybe I'll try that in future?)

Ongoing, I will continue to tweak the model and refine the sources. This includes adding Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) to incorporate ongoing updates to my website.

I would genuinely like to know how it works for you, so feel free to email me any feedback.

To help it do better, you can also thumbs-up or thumbs-down the responses it generates.

Source material used in The Website Manager's Agent

• Publication: Web Management and Governance Masterclass (ref: diffily.com/masterclass)
• Publication: The Website Managers Handbook (ref: diffily.com/book)
• Online articles: Numerous articles from my website about web management and governance (diffily.com/articles)
• Blog posts: The most relevant posts about web management and governance from my blog (ref: blog.diffily.com)
• Article: Why digital government in Ireland is failing and how to fix it (from Medium.com)
• Article: How to plan manpower on a web team (ref: AListApart.com/author/shanediffily/)
• Article: How to Educate Your Website Stakeholders (ref: AListApart.com/author/shanediffily/)
• Article: The 8 basic forms of digital Content Design (ref: blog.diffily.com)
• Article: The 'O3 model' for planning a web team's digital capacity (ref: blog.diffily.com)
• Article: Agentic AI spells the end of traditional websites. This is how Content Designers need to react. (ref: diffily.com)
• Artefact: New Framework of Web Governance (ref: diffily.com/governance)
• Artefact: Self assessment questions to gauge your understanding of web governance (ref: diffily.com/downloads)
• Artefact: A sample set of digital standards for a website (ref: diffily.com/downloads)
• Artefact: How to healthcheck governance quality on your website (ref: diffily.com/downloads)
• Artefact: A template approach for website management and governance (ref: diffily.com/downloads)
• Artefact: A description of common web team roles and responsibilities (ref: diffily.com/downloads)
• Artefact: How to build a web governance roadmap (ref: diffily.com/downloads)
• Artefact: How to audit your web governance (ref: diffily.com/downloads)
• Artefact: How to craft a digital strategy (ref: diffily.com/downloads)
• Artefact: How improve quality for basic aspects of web delivery (ref: diffily.com/downloads)
• Presentation: Better web content for better government (ref: diffily.com/speaking)
• Presentation: AI is going to eat your website for lunch - but you can set the menu (ref: workingincontent.com)