The end of the honeymoon period

[j4]

Okay, perhaps all is not clue and light here. This is taken from an email from somebody who is actually going to be adding content to www.admin.cam.ac.uk:

"If your happy for me to provide html content then I'll need some pointers on
style etc
I'm pretty competence with dreamweaver and if agreeable I can send you the
pages ready for incorpoarating into the existing structure."

Now, the bit of the site that he's going to be updating is pretty bad already. I didn't actually think it could get much worse. The rest of the web team already start to lose the will to live if they have to look at it for more than 10 minutes.

This is the bit of the site that I'm going to be responsible for soon.

Comments

[huskyteer.livejournal.com]

Ahahahahaha. We get e-mails like that. We tell them that it's verrrry important we write the HTML ourselves to ensure consistent look-and-feel across the site and compliance with accessibility guidelines. Works every time.

[j4.livejournal.com]

This was "our" (not my) reply:

   I checked with the rest of the team and for the time being we would ask you to submit the material in the usual way, through word docs. We will put the material up for you.

<grits teeth>

[k425.livejournal.com]

Could you suggest, as a first "pointer for style etc" that he use a spellchecker?

[j4.livejournal.com]

He's a project manager. I suspect it'll be beyond him. :->

[marnameow.livejournal.com]

Tell them that you have to do it yourselves to ensure compliance with the Disability Discrimination Act. I find 'Your web pages are illegal' to be a fairly useful stick.

[j4.livejournal.com]

Yebbut, in every other area of the admin web pages we're trying very hard to enable (moo) other content-providers (moo, moo) to manage their own content (moooooooo) and take responsibility for webpage creation in a quack-quack-oinkety-moo. We actually don't want to have to write everybody's web pages for them. Because if we did, we would have less time to sit around and drink coffee. :)

[nja.livejournal.com]

Doesn't quite work like that. I have a colleague who I persuaded a few years ago to get a web account and organise his own course pages. He uploads a couple of PDF files once a year, and this usually involves my spending a couple of hours on the phone explaining to him how to use FTP, and no I can't upload the files myself because I don't "own" his area on the central web server, he does, and if he's going to put the bloody things in a subdirectory he needs to include that information in the hyperlink, the hyperlink's the bit of the file that says <a href="...">, you change it using a text editor, I don't know which text editor, whichever text editor he usually uses, no I don't know his FTP password...

[darcydodo]

I'm sorry, I can't think about this. My head would explode.

[rmc28]

The wonderful variability of university staff :( Of course, now I'm wondering just who the culprit is.

[mhw.livejournal.com]

O horror, horror, horror!

That person should be - well, words fail me. All I can do is to offer you my deepest sympathy and revulsion.

[truecatachresis.livejournal.com]

Just organise an assasin. It'll be easier in the long run.

[d-floorlandmine.livejournal.com]

[grin] The spellchecker would definitely be a good start ... maybe that's why he uses DreamWringer - his html would be even less likely to do anything than mine (having managed to mistype <centre> earlier through lack of thinkingness ...)