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TonyT
Posts: 188
Joined: 9/30/2003
From: Vancouver, WA
Status: offline
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Something I have to know..... - 10/3/2003 11:56:27
I have my own business now, although it's only a few months old, so it hasn't seen much action yet.
Presently, I work on the side with an acquaintance of mine that has a networking and web hosting business. He hires me to build web sites for his present customers. Although a nice guy, he bends over backward for them to the point where they take advantage of his goodness and nickel and dime him to death. He is basically giving the store away in some of his business dealings and then scratches his head and wonders why things aren't going well for him.
My issue is, as it relates to the sites I build for his customers, that he refuses to get contracts from his customers, sign-off any milestones and eventually get the site signed-off as finished (remember the song that never ends?), lets the content trickle in and so on. In fact, after I refused to do a site for one of his customers that was a total squid stick, he decided to do it himself and he is still trying to make this jerk happy after 6 months, without charging anything more for his continued work! I've talked to him about all this, but he refuses to change things. Needless to say, dealing with this approach is causing me a lot of unnecessary stress.
I can’t handle this fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants approach. I believe it cultivates sucky customers, for one. I need more structure, such as a paper trail, guild-lines, contracts, etc.
My questions to you all as web professionals is: how do you choose to handle a customer who does not have their content ready and believes that they can continue to add to their site indefinately and you're expected to do it for free and how long do you allow a web site to go on until you say enough? I have some ideas myself, but I want to get some feedback. I have package deals on my site that lay out what they get for how much and extra is charged accordingly. Seems right to me.
I am going to begin having my acquaintance go directly through my company and then he can charge his customer beyond my prices so that he can make a profit. That way, I’m calling the shots and can get a good night’s sleep knowing that all the paperwork is done and everything is right with the world.
Thanks for any suggestions and for living through this long post! hehe
< Message edited by TonyT -- 10/3/2003 8:58:43 AM >
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DarlingBri
Posts: 3123
From: Left of Centre, Cork, Ireland
Status: offline
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RE: Something I have to know..... - 10/6/2003 19:20:39
quote:
ORIGINAL: TonyT
My questions to you all as web professionals is: how do you choose to handle a customer who does not have their content ready and believes that they can continue to add to their site indefinately and you're expected to do it for free and how long do you allow a web site to go on until you say enough?
I love Content Mangement Systems for exactly this reason.
I don't care what your content is. I don't care what your navigation structure, order, or topics are. I care how the site looks, but that's it.
You put in all the content, rearrange the nav bars, add new pages and sections -- it's all you, baby.
Long live the CMS.
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TonyT
Posts: 188
Joined: 9/30/2003
From: Vancouver, WA
Status: offline
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RE: Something I have to know..... - 10/6/2003 23:10:46
quote:
ORIGINAL: DarlingBri
I love Content Mangement Systems for exactly this reason.
Can you give me an example of what a Content Management System is and how I would implement it to my benefit? I'm not sure I understand.
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DarlingBri
Posts: 3123
From: Left of Centre, Cork, Ireland
Status: offline
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RE: Something I have to know..... - 10/7/2003 0:40:31
Umm, I can try :)
OK, so I'm developing this site for a client right now:
http://www.appercept.co.uk/fns/default.asp
If you run your mouse over the nav bar, you'll see that all the links go to the same page: display.asp
Note that I only had to build one page to display all those topics.
The topics and contents are managed using a back-end database system much like this forum you're using right now. In it, there's a section called Top Nav. In top nav are topics called Networking, Security, Consulting, etc. Whatever you call your topics is what appears on the nav bar. Change the titles, the nav bar changes. Add or delete a topic, the nav bar changes.
Within the topic, you make posts and the posts make the content of the pages you see on the site.
The critical thing is that it's all under the site owner's control. They can upload images, add formatting to page contents, insert hyperlinks, etc, just by making posts.
There are a million different CMSs out there; here are 102 of them if you want to use ASP on a Windows server. There are a million more fon non-Windows server platforms, notably PHP.
My personal approach is to use the CMS to get the content in and let the client manage it in there, and then build my own front end. I use anything from actual CMSs to forum software to Vince's shopping cart to get the data in; I use FrontPage's database tool (the DRW) to get it out formatted exactly the way I want on pages designed the way I want.
Here is another site I'm developing using the same forum software as a CMS:
http://www.appercept.co.uk/nliag/
You'll see that it looks and functions very differently. But, both clients will use the same system inthe same way to manage their content.
< Message edited by DarlingBri -- 10/7/2003 12:43:41 AM >
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TonyT
Posts: 188
Joined: 9/30/2003
From: Vancouver, WA
Status: offline
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RE: Something I have to know..... - 10/7/2003 12:02:42
It sounds like MacroMedia's Contribute 2 would be a winner for this type of thing.
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