Web-site Changes: My Memory Returns
Written by Gloria Metrick on . Published as written. It may not reflect how these systems work today.
In my previous post Web-Site Warning, I mentioned that I'm just this week returning to do some work on my web-site. It's refreshing my memory on a number of issues.
While I won't say that working on my web-site was the actual reason I looked for and took a W-2 job, having the web-site move hanging over my head might have been something of a motivator to procrastinate it by doing anything else, including taking a "permanent" job. Now that I'm back working on the web-site, I'm starting to remember how extremely tedious it is.
Even with all the templates and tools, the web-site still looks about like I personally put it together, and I don't mean that in a good way. However, one good thing, is that I had to write very little code to get a couple things working the way I wanted them to, so I suppose I shouldn't complain too much about it. In the end, though, at some point I'll probably have to pay a designer to "fix it up" but I can possibly address some of the issues at WordPress events throughout this year, where I'll likely meet plenty of people with design experience.
Side Note
When I was working at the U of M, they had needed some items added to the customer department's web-site - just things like a few links and such, nothing that probably required any programming. They didn't know how they'd get that accomplished so, trying to be helpful, I volunteered. They just plain insisted that they didn't want that. At the time, I was puzzled that they're rather let things go undone than have my help.
Now, looking at my own web-site, and knowing some of them might have seen the unfinished mess that I'd left my web-site in, I can imagine they were possibly afraid I'd mess-up the nice formatting they had and I think I now understand why they were hesitant. However, to anyone reading, I'll just say that adding plain content, even if it's in links, doesn't tend to harm the formatting. That, plus the fact that you can always undo what you've done if you're careful as most of us professional programmers are.
In any case, now, I can kind of laugh about it, as puzzled as I'd previously been. But if you think about it, people have their concerns about keeping things looking nice and it's hard to allay their fears about that if their fears are strong-enough (and if your own web-site looks bad-enough).
Gloria Metrick
GeoMetrick Enterprises
http://www.GeoMetrick.com/