Working with charities

[AmiNeo]

Well done!

Hopefully now you can negotiate properly with them and get what you actually need out of your "free" labour as well as them getting their website. Remember to include the initial fumbling in your write-ups - shows your ability to turn around a difficult working situation; bloody important in the real world!

Will do!


Thanks guys!

Sadly, havig looked at the site, given the complexity, distance and the fact that I do not yet know enough about the languages it is written in. I may not be able to help them afterall. She still seems hesitant about giving me server access to pull the current site off to work with, and it looks heavy with ASP PHP and Javascript. Languages we're not learning until later next year.

I will keep you posted!

 

[Harrison]

Do you actually need to do anything with their existing site? Other than the content it contains?

Personally I would take the much easier option of playing around with Joomla. Find a pre-made template for it that would suit their site with a bit of treaking to make it unique. It removes a huge amount of work and hands them a fully featured and mature CMS free of charge.

If you decide to move forward with the project again you have to make it clear to them that the design and functionality of the site has to be your main focus and the actual site content will come later once they are happy with the look and function of the site.

If they agree that don't build anything. start by working on mockups of site designs in Photoshop or a similar program. Get then to look at the designs and they will have the opportunity to comment and change things at this stage. Once they are happy with the design get them to agree to sign that off.

The next stage you can then concentrate on making the site work. At this point you should be able to be left alone to work on it, and arrange a date when you will have something working to show them. You won't need to have the whole site conpleted and ready to go by the next meeting. Just a functional site that looks like the signed off design and a couple of pages of content to demo the functionality. You can utilise that to iron out any navigation and other UI issues they might have. And also typographical layout.

Once you have that stage complete and signed off you can then finish working on making the finished site fully working. They can then be shown how to use the site to add and edit content.

Normally around this stage the client will also have drafted rough edits of the most important pages to be included on the site. You will need to discuss site sections/heading for the navigation etc, then you can build the menu structure. They should then start sending you word documents containing content for different pages which you can start dropping into the site and formatting.

And then it's job done.

 

[AmiNeo]

Do you actually need to do anything with their existing site? Other than the content it contains?

Personally I would take the much easier option of playing around with Joomla. Find a pre-made template for it that would suit their site with a bit of treaking to make it unique. It removes a huge amount of work and hands them a fully featured and mature CMS free of charge.

If you decide to move forward with the project again you have to make it clear to them that the design and functionality of the site has to be your main focus and the actual site content will come later once they are happy with the look and function of the site.

If they agree that don't build anything. start by working on mockups of site designs in Photoshop or a similar program. Get then to look at the designs and they will have the opportunity to comment and change things at this stage. Once they are happy with the design get them to agree to sign that off.

The next stage you can then concentrate on making the site work. At this point you should be able to be left alone to work on it, and arrange a date when you will have something working to show them. You won't need to have the whole site conpleted and ready to go by the next meeting. Just a functional site that looks like the signed off design and a couple of pages of content to demo the functionality. You can utilise that to iron out any navigation and other UI issues they might have. And also typographical layout.

Once you have that stage complete and signed off you can then finish working on making the finished site fully working. They can then be shown how to use the site to add and edit content.

Normally around this stage the client will also have drafted rough edits of the most important pages to be included on the site. You will need to discuss site sections/heading for the navigation etc, then you can build the menu structure. They should then start sending you word documents containing content for different pages which you can start dropping into the site and formatting.

And then it's job done.

That's roughly what I intended from the get go, but they skipped straight to the final stage

Right now my main focus is on sorting out travel, expectations for any on site attendance / whether the fact I wont be on site every time I'm working on it is going to be a problem for them and whether it is actually a viable project based on all given circumstances.

Their site is pretty large and not just the usual couple of pages they have a lot on it that they want preserving, so starting a fresh would likely mean just as much work re-adding everything they currently have, seems easier from here to rip a copy of what they have and learn to alter it after learning some ASP, JS and PHP.

It's not actually amazingly complex, but they're very mature shall we say and they have no IT staff. My noobness with web languages having only just started second year are showing through. Their current site already has a content management system in place so I'd prefer to keep it in for their benefit if I'm doing it.

Harrison would it be okay if I pm'ed you for a little advice?

 

[Harrison]

Sure. If I can help in anyway I will try.

 

[AmiNeo]

Finally got them to agree to doing it the right way.

Now I just need to figure out the languages it is written in enough to alter it.