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Webbuilder activities
Apr. 9th, 2015 02:00 pmI have been swayed to renewing the website of www.buikdansopleiding.nl. This is the website for the two year training for bellydancers, I took it between 2005-2007. Two of the curriculum teachers are friends/colleagues: Laudie is my dance mom (can't say no to her) and Peter was my second teacher and fellow article writer for the Dutch BD magazine.
Their webmaster died about half a year ago and since then, the website has been neglected. The webmaster build his own CMS which is now seriously compromised and they need to make it easier to update and maintain the website. Laudie asked me for advice, and when we got to talking we ended up with 'I might as well do it myself'. Yep. Bad, bad, bad decision on my side. We all know how webdesign can go seriously off track, with people requesting animated kittens and glitter. I have faith that we can work it out though, and we're going to work on it together next Friday.
My system to prevent major communication breakdown is that I am going to sit in a room with two of the members, and they are going to do part of the work. The genius plan is:
1. If they are tired, we'll stop. Thus tey understand how I am not spending many hours on getting the last pixel juuuuuust right, because I am not letting them go until they say they are satisfied.
2. I take care of installing Wordpress and fiddling with templates. They prepare the content, add, edit and create pages. Thus they will be busy with their own work, leaving less room to nag about my work.
I tried it a couple of years ago with making costumes for Sense of Bellydance, and it worked. At the end of the sewing maraton they understood how much work it was, and how I would not want to do that all by myself. Nobody asked me to make costumes since the sewing marathon, they rather noodle around by themselves because when I get involved, I make them work. I wrote a short document for them to set the assignment and scope the subject. I am not a designer and I will not change fonts or edit pictures though we all know that I will be resizing and cutting a bit during the proces. I gave them a list of content to prepare and questions to ponder, we'll see how far we get.
This is what it looks like now:
I think I can top this with a day of work. And if this goes well, I also have the Dalla Dream Dancer's website to take care of. I care too much about too many things and other peopla re lazy and won't google to solve their own problem.
Their webmaster died about half a year ago and since then, the website has been neglected. The webmaster build his own CMS which is now seriously compromised and they need to make it easier to update and maintain the website. Laudie asked me for advice, and when we got to talking we ended up with 'I might as well do it myself'. Yep. Bad, bad, bad decision on my side. We all know how webdesign can go seriously off track, with people requesting animated kittens and glitter. I have faith that we can work it out though, and we're going to work on it together next Friday.
My system to prevent major communication breakdown is that I am going to sit in a room with two of the members, and they are going to do part of the work. The genius plan is:
1. If they are tired, we'll stop. Thus tey understand how I am not spending many hours on getting the last pixel juuuuuust right, because I am not letting them go until they say they are satisfied.
2. I take care of installing Wordpress and fiddling with templates. They prepare the content, add, edit and create pages. Thus they will be busy with their own work, leaving less room to nag about my work.
I tried it a couple of years ago with making costumes for Sense of Bellydance, and it worked. At the end of the sewing maraton they understood how much work it was, and how I would not want to do that all by myself. Nobody asked me to make costumes since the sewing marathon, they rather noodle around by themselves because when I get involved, I make them work. I wrote a short document for them to set the assignment and scope the subject. I am not a designer and I will not change fonts or edit pictures though we all know that I will be resizing and cutting a bit during the proces. I gave them a list of content to prepare and questions to ponder, we'll see how far we get.
This is what it looks like now:
I think I can top this with a day of work. And if this goes well, I also have the Dalla Dream Dancer's website to take care of. I care too much about too many things and other peopla re lazy and won't google to solve their own problem.
