, yesterday I finally managed to overcome my phobia of the blank page (and my usual inability to execute the design ideas I have in my head due to sheer incompetence) and developed a solid mockup of montrealstories.org. I’m very happy with the direction things are going in now, and it looks like I can get the site launched in a few days or a week, depending on some pieces that have yet to come in.
I’m in the midst of some
pretty big decisions – one involving starting up a consulting company with some colleagues, one involving moving to the other side of the table, figuratively speaking.
The latter brings up lots of questions though. People (designers, web developers) always complain about how clueless clients are. What if the client isn’t clueless? What if your client knows exactly what can and can’t be done, what the best approach would be, how much it should cost? What if you client has a long background in web design, web coding, content development for the web, and the like? What if I suggest that the code be done to (say) W3C standards – or at least pay attention to the current developments on that side of things?
Does that still look like a client you want to work for? Or is that still a nightmare client? I’d let you do your thing – but cut a corner, and I’ll see it. I’ll look at the code and expect it to be professionally done. Still a good client?
A fear I have is that although clueless clients are a horror, so might clued-in clients be to many web designers and web developers. Can you deal with someone who knows his stuff?
Interesting development
in Michael World. I have a promising interview next week for a job I’ll take if it’s offered to me. It’s still a web-centered job, but it’s on the other side of the table – not for a vendor (a web shop, an interactive agency, a dot-com, etc.) but for a purchaser of web services. It’s an appealing thought in that it will likely be a bit more stable than your average dot-com. And better managed as well, I bet.
Meanwhile, I’ve been furiously working on three sites simultaneously plus a possible redesign of this site to mark its first anniversary, which is on the 13th of February. February also marks the 6th anniversary of the launch of my first ever personal site, which (unfortunately, though it was an abomination) is completely lost now.
Another day, another website ripoff
. As noted at urban75.com, their design has been ripped off by Narconon. Pathetic.
Tom makes a great
point today at plasticbag.org. I enjoy using Blogger, but as a point of principle it’s important to have a variety of tools available for content management.
Personally, I don’t think it’s viable to ever do a site, even a small site, without integrating a means to manage the writing (at least) without messing with the raw html files. I’ve done lots of small sites for people who haven’t made a big commitment to a web strategy – they just want a little website.
When I do a site like that I am available to make updates – but those sites have usually been done as a favour, for free. I don’t always have the time to maintain them fully. So I generally try and download most or all of the update responsibility for updates to my “client” – usually a friend or someone like that. And they always mess them up.
So for me, it’s really important that there are options available for content management, that the tools are being developed.
I’m starting to put this idea to the test today, when I (finally) have my first real meeting with the nice people at Santropol Roulant, for whom I’m putting together a small team to build a site as a donation. The idea is to do a well-designed, professional quality site for the organization – an important meals on wheels service here in Montreal. So we’re going to start to define the project today, and implicit in the project definition will be to include content management tools so they can “own” the daily management of their own site.
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