Re: Juggling w/ web developers

[Rowena Hart <rhart -at- XCERT -dot- COM>]

John,

I had almost the exact same problem in 1995 when I worked
for our provincial government. I was on a co-op work term
(internship) and had been given an 8-month contract so I
could create a web site that described a new government
program. This web site had to reside within the existing
ministry web site, which was controlled by a webmaster
who worked for another department.

I met with the webmaster at the beginning of the project to
ask him about his HTML style and get his input regarding
the size, navigation, and look of the site I was creating. He
would not release his HTML style guide because it was an
internal document, which could "only be read by staff". He
did not think I was "staff" so he would not give it to me.

I asked another staff member to order the document for me,
and gleaned any additional information I needed from the
site's source code.

When the site was ready for launch (i.e. it had been
reviewed and approved by three levels of management
as well as someone from the public relations department)
I sent it to the webmaster to post. He never "got around
to it" and had to be ordered to publish the site. When he
did publish it, I discovered that he had removed all graphics,
reorganized links, and changed type faces, text, page and
section headings.  His defense was that I was not following
ministry HTML style guidelines.

I took the problem to the department manager, who took
it to the division director, who talked to the webmaster's
department manager, who talked to the webmaster.  The
modified site was removed and replaced with the
approved site within two days.

So, in answer to your question, if you are dealing with
someone who (a) won't give you upload/download access
to the company web site, and (b) won't make the required
changes, then you have no choice but to talk to the person's
manager(s).

If his direct manager isn't working with you, go further up
the food chain to the president of marketing or engineering.
Websites should be considered critical marketing documents
and not personal hobbyhorses. Similarly, any technical
material that is posted to your company's web site should
be reviewed and approved by the head of engineering.  If
you did not follow this approval process before, then do it
now.  Formal approval is really hard to argue with.

Hope this helps,

Rowena

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