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Subject:RE: Web site maintenance by non-technical users From:"Gene Kim-Eng" <techpubs -at- genek -dot- com> To:listmail -at- technomom -dot- com, techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com Date:08 Sep 2003 23:12:42 GMT
This may be one of those instances where discretion is the
better part of valor. Your "client" in this case seems to
have a clear idea of what she wants *and* to be unwilling
to consider other approaches, so the lesson for you students
may be "the client isn't always right, but is always the
client." The upside of this is that your code-averse client
is unlikely to be volunteering to update any other sites
besides the one she's already responsible for (and probably
unwillingly at that), so the risk that a Word-based editing
scheme will "break" pages created in a different tool is
probably low. Your assigned goal is to "redesign" the site,
but an inevitable part of any design/redesign project is to
assess the needs of the client and satisfy them. In this
case, your client self-identifies her need as a site that a
non-technical user can update *using Word,* and if you spend
a lot of time trying to sell her on something different, the
inevitable feedback that she will provide your instructors
with is that you failed to satisfy her need. I would just
design her a simple, inline-text-and-images website based
on a dumbed-down Word template and a site directory mapped
to a network drive letter and also a better version of the
site that demonstrates what could have been done for a more
receptive client. You can even do a presentation for your
client and then let her (or her bosses) choose between the
two. That would be more of a real-world lesson on the
process of a communications project at that.
Gene Kim-Eng
------- Original Message -------
On
Mon, 08 Sep 2003 13:52:54 -0400 Cynthia Armistead?wrote:
She doesn't want to know about FTP or anything similar - she wants to be able to edit site pages and save them just like any other document. That part, at least, I can accomplish by mapping a network drive for her.