Rash promises
We had the painters in a couple of years ago..
I had to look back on this site to find out when. In fact it was just over two years, which proves that this site has some value even if it only as a diary of events.
Anyhows they painted the kitchen. And they really did paint just about everything. It took me a while to remove paint from the floor, the oven, the kettle and the toaster.
Now these painters were chatty. They would talk the hind legs off a donkey. In the course of [mostly one sided] conversation the subject of websites cropped up. They said they would paint the front of the house If I did a site for them. In a moment of rashness I agreed, probably just to shut them up. They painted the front of the house. They painted the garage door. They painted around the windows and I must admit the house looked great afterwards. They said they would get back to me about the website.
I didn’t hear from them again.
Until yesterday.
One of them breezed around and in the back door, scaring the shite out of me in the process. He wanted his website and implied he wanted it now.
Now this poses a bit of a problem. For a while now I have been contemplating getting out of the hosting lark. It’s not the time or even the cost [it doesn’t quite pay for itself]: it’s the thought of what happens if I have another heart “event”. It’s okay if I’m out of action for a few days, but what happens if I’m out of action for eternity? There is no one to look after my little business as Daughter has enough on her hands and doesn’t show much interest anyway. Grandson is a bit young to take on such a task.
So I mentioned my little conundrum to Painter and he hit me with the killer line – I had promised!
Fuck! I keep my promises so I’m cornered. My interest in websites has been on the wane for a while now. I’ll read ’em. I’ll even scribble on this one from time to time. But I really don’t want to get back into setting up servers, and worst of all, get involved in designing. My designing head fell off years ago. But I have landed myself right in it whether I like it or not.
He is to send me photographs and some text. I haven’t heard from him since.
Now I’m afraid to open my email.
Have you given him an “Eff off” quote for the web site work? Just think of a four digit number and double it. Then tell them it’s a yearly fee including 24 hour on call (if his site goes down no doubt he’ll be on the horn at all hours), backups, updates, security and your dogs flatulence attacks.
Trust me. You’ll never hear from them again.
I did consider just offering to pay him for the painting of the outside but sadly, promises are promises and I have to stand by them. I have decided to set him up with a site for a year and then he’ll have to go his own way and find hosting elsewhere.
GD, I’ll host it for you if you like. Like you, I’m very much out of the website business. It’s a thankless job But I have the space on several servers so adding one more site would make any difference. Email me if you’re interested and I’ll set you up with login details.
I have said this before, Darragh, but you are a true scholar and a gentleman. Hosting isn’t actually the problem as I have the space. The problem is that some day I’d going to head off into eternity, leaving a block of sites with no one to look after them or [more importantly] pay for them. There again, I presume I will be beyond caring at that point?
You promised, traded, merely “to do a site” for him.
How about that that’s a one-off set-up, creation.
Just assembling his pictures and text (incl. presumably advertising, displaying his services, and contact details.
That’s it, it’s a one-off, an html creation, static, but it’s possibly all he wants.
I don’t know if you promised to host it as well, let alone be around to maintain it, but you could explain that with health over the last two years that’s inevitably not a likely thing, you’re winding down the business, but hey, there are any number of smart hosting deals and IT folk who would compete for said hosting and maintenance, uptime, etc. for a normal yearly or whatever fee – that you can create, design a template site to his pleasure pride & satisfaction, as you promised – quite some skills doing the website creation, a mystery to him anyway, from his text & pics – and then point out it’s finished, and now he just needs to find a co. to host it, you might give him some kindly tips and pointers (might have to research a few good deals yourself), but it’s the major part done, and you are now getting out of the (quite separate from the initial agreement to ‘create’ a website from his material) minor hosting side of things, only a personal hobby one now?
Think something like that might fly? After all, assembling is material nicely and showing the pages to him, a few tweaks maybe, is possibly all he’s thinking of?
You “did a site for them.” – after that they can take it anywhere, the annual hosting fee is just another business expense.
Good cheer and good luck! ;=})
I blame this fine German lager for my loquacity.
So you might need to look through a range of potential templates, perhaps as young or not quite so lads they might want something a ‘bit modern’, and you might as well welcome the email, because then you’ll get an idea of where they’re at, coming from, hoping to go to … heck you might even have to suggest edits to text, but that will just add to their perceived value of your work … a bit of consultation with them over what they imagine, want to achieve, could be easy enough, if some work putting it together…
Work out what the value of their bartered work might be, adjust your hourly rate accordingly, do them a nice enough one-off.
Could it even be interesting, almost fun, if it was a relatively short exploration, exercise, experience?
Of course you want it over quickly, but also everyone happy!
_
“Give a difficult job to a lazy man;- he’ll figure out the most efficient way of doing it!”
Loquacious or not, you have just about read my mind. I have decided to set up the site using WordPress which means the design isn’t too much of a problem as there are tons of templates available. It will just be a simple site – who we are, a gallery of previous work and how to contact us type of site. Over the course of the year I can explain to him how to edit his site [easy, with WordPress] and then hand it over to him at the end of the year. The only problem is that I have a feeling that the Internet is a complete foreign land as far as he is concerned!
He probably has no concept of hosting nor maintenance. He think of a site as rather like a poster design or a business card — ‘digital concrete’ a colleague of mine calls it. So you do that simple site, that is what he is expecting, hosting, maintenance that’s something else: here’s your business card/poster now you will need to find a printer!
Glad there’s some light at the end of the tunnel.
As long as it’s not a bloke with a torch bringing more work!
Maybe computers are foreign, let alone ‘the internet’. Editing?
Perhaps they just see a progression from flyers to newspaper ads, telephone listing, signage on vehicles, whatever, to the interweb thing, and want that.
They’d need to alter signage and letterhead paper. I don’t know about SEO stuff.
Maybe they’d be happy with a finished site that doesn’t need editing?
Unless they change their ph numbers or address? Or want to add a new testimonial or service?
As for editing, from a few typos on a $500/hr lawyers site (whom I know, who got them fixed) to many clumsy grammatical errors on a funeral directors site, a chap I met at a party (yes even funeral directors can have time out;-) and afterward mentioned them, with a vague thought of doing him a favour – I put off as too much work to volunteer for the moment. He might have built his own site, and so buried (ahem) in the depths of it didn’t notice the details or inconsistencies.
Many pages. I started making notes, but haven’t yet written to him about everything I think could be improved. And this just as a viewer.
Hey maybe I could trade my notes and suggested corrections for a discount burial?
The lawyer & partner had entrusted theirs to a pro, and evidently not proofread it over decades of nonetheless successful business.
Evidently clients eyes glazed over as well. They just saw the testimonials, work areas, photos, contact details. But I noticed the typos.
Clumsy sentences, but my point is that maybe a workmanlike job that they like the look of enough will be enough. Aargh, it’s after 1 am! ;=})
Cheers!
The brief [if you can call it that] is to get his company onto the Internet. So it will be a basic three or four page static site; no “blogs” or anything that requires regular updating.
The great advantage of WordPress [or any other CMS] is that the owner can add or remove text quite easily. WordPress is the one I have worked with almost since it started so that’s the one he’ll get.
Would one of your old partners at Silver Haired Interweb Technology take it on?