Cheesy? Yes! YES! O GOD YES! So I have stayed up way too late to work on my client project last night only to meet with them and given the “alight, but next time….”. I’m currently scheduled to meet with them again tomorrow at noon. Whats going on is that, last time they were freaking out about the flash piece and being unable to update it. So I promised them that I would try to make the images in the flash piece to be read from an xml file, so that they wouldn’t even have to touch Flash. Also, there new season will begin soon and they wasn’t some of the information reading that online. I have updated both the home page and the flash piece, but I am still trying to upload the xml file to joomla. I’m really happy because I was able to create a flash piece that worked how we envisioned and now it’s just getting it to work with joomla. Overall, I’m not as stressed as I was but, I would enjoy finishing this project so I can focus on some school work and the job search. Well, I’ll see you in another life.
This project is crazy. I kinda like the ride I’ve been on so far, filled with extreme ups and downs (mostly downs), but I’m telling the heavens, I am ready for it to end. I cannot tell you how ready I am to be done with this project. I dream of having a night free to do anything, smell a flower, drink so milk straight from the cow, anything not involving the site. In all reality, it hasn’t been that bad this week. we’re almost at a finishing point but were waiting for the Columbus controller to approve the site so we can promote it live. Also I’ve got to fix a bug in the email form, clean up the back end and update the flash piece. All small things that will somehow take me ten hours to complete. I’m at the point where I want to just move on. I done car about building a new site, I just done want to work on this site any more. I really don’t. I enjoy working with my client but she has horrible communication skill, which doesn’t help anything. I was supposed to meet with her last Tuesday at three and she didn’t meet me at her house until 3:30. She forgot the meeting time only knowing that she had a meeting with me that day. I even sent her an email earlier that day the totally said the time. Again, we planned to meet next Wednesday, and she wrote it down in her planner, but today, she again asked me the meeting time and was surprised that we agreed on next Tuesday at 3:00. I’m really sorry that everyone is hearing me complain, but I really don’t care anymore. I’ve been pretty solid about keeping comments to myself, but this project is just getting obnoxious. I ready for them to ask me to balance on a ball, juggle pies, while eating a 5 foot sub. It simply can’t be done, and that what I want to scream at my client. I’m now good for you, just stay with your current site and let me just burn my house down with myself inside. Let me ask you why when the client asked for a flash piece and that I actually created a flash piece that she was so shocked that the flash piece was created in flash? She keeps saying how it would be difficult to edit a flash piece, well why did the ask for a flash piece then. I’m trying to do some things to solve this issue, but it’s really a pain in the butt. I’m going to try and link the images in the flash piece to an xml file so that they can just drop new pictures in, but I haven’t really done that yet and I don’t know if it will be hard. If I can’t then I doing a really shitty fixed that will just scroll through all the performances for the entire season, so that they won’t have to update it for an entire year. Personally, I think it’s kind of a stupid idea, but whatever the client wants. I understand that they want to have full control over the site, but it’s unreasonable to believe that you will. If you buy a stove your limited to its functions and when it stops working you’ll most likely need to hire someone to come and fix it. The same with web work, I can create something that will aid in updating website, but it’s not a full proof plan, and my contact acts like a CMS should make coffee for her. I was hired at the college to manage a cms because it requires some specialized knowledge that not everyone has. I also get the feeling that self exploration isn’t going to happen with my client and the cms. When showing them how everything works, they felt overwhelmed and I get the feeling that their not even going to try and figure it out. I understand it can be difficult and extremely hard for people to learn this stuff, but it’s something that has to be done or you’ll have to pay for others specialized knowledge. I’m planning on doing a few more essential updates for the site and then telling them any more work will require payment because this project . Well thank you for listening, I hope you have a great day.
Transferred site from new server back to old. Glitches. Fixed them. Need a new page created. Project will never end. Stab me in the face.
….. buy a bottle of vodka, and take a shotgun with me. This has been a very stressful last couple weeks as I have wayyy tooo many projects going on at once. Whets worse is this Valentine project will never end. I have a feeling that it’s going to haunt me for the rest of my life. I’d love to finish this job and walk away from it, but I feel like I’ve been buried up too my neck in sand and honey poured over my face next to an ant pit. Where I’m at with this super cool project is that I’ve almost a hundred percent complete with the site. All I have to do now is upload it to their linux server (yes were staying with the old server not with the new windows one we had toast.net create for us), create a htaccess file that tells people typing in valentinetheatre.com to go to the old site, fix any bugs in different browsers, then make it live. It seems like this truly has been the project from hell, with every step in the project taking at least 15 hours longer than expected. I pray to god that either by tonight or tomorrow night, the site will be online and I can take a break until summer comes and they need additional updates.
One reason that this project sucks so much is because I have been kind of hard on myself. I’ve made a few unwise decisions, but really I feel like crap when I need to extend a deadline because I physically have no time to work on the project. I think my client realizes this and I do feel bad but really, their getting a project that can range from 1500 to 4000 dollars for free (I’ve done additional research on pricing and I think I might have been off on my initial proposal). Even though I can say this, I still feel like I’m letting the world down when I tell them to bear with me another day. I guess that’s something that I’ll have to overcome and I now realize the importance of researching projects before hand to be able to accurately estimate a project, whether it being money, TIME, or whatever. Hopefully I’ll survive long enough to see this thing go up. See you soon.
Sorry, for getting back to you late with my exciting tales. I been working hard trying to finish up my project this weekend and I’m hopefully very close to doing so. I’ve about 98% done with the site and I’m currently trying to get it thrown up on the valentine server. To do this I had to contact toast.net and ask them questions about what I was planning to do. As I was conversing, I had a second sever (windows) set up so that I could build the new site with a faster mysql database. What is really nice is that now they have two servers online (no charge) and that the old is still active and the new will be activated instantly once I’ve completed the site. With that being said, I’m currently installing Joomla on the new server and am ready to transfer everything over from my server to theirs. Once that is completed, I just have to fix a bug in the email form and create some rollover info for the shows at the valentine. Finally I want to clean up some of the backend for easier accessibility. The plan was to have the site online today, but I am still in the process of setting up the site, and Toast.net is out of their offices till Monday. Unfortunate, but it saved my butt from having to stay up all night to get it online. Well I’m off to complete the last few steps in this project. See Ya.
Well, I fudged up this week. I’ve been working on my project very closely and kind of lost track of time. Sorry for missing one of my posts. I know my life is the most interesting of everyone who has ever lived. he he he….. What I’ve been up to recently is trying to finish the Valentine site on my server so I can drop it onto the valentine server. So far I’ve completely rebuilt the site on my own server because I couldn’t transfer my database information. That was pretty sweet. Long story short, I’ve got a information gathering form I need to fix, re-Photoshop of one image, and I need clean up the backend of the site (for user usability).
This project has been the craziest project that I’ve worked on in a long time. So far I’ve probably put about 40 to 50 hours on the website creation alone. Normally this would bug me but this project has some wonderful perks associated with it. I am planning on building another website in Joomla, and believe me I learned my weight in gold. No, I’ve learned so much just to do something simple; I’m really not worried about using this program anymore. I also am now going to receive 25 dollars an hour for web updates for the valentine after this project. A sweet freelance gig. Well, I’m trying to have this site completed by tomorrow morning so I’m going to leave you guys and continue busting it out.
Wow, all I can say is wow. So many triumphs and so many failures in one day. Creating or even setting up Joomla for the new Valentine site is a challenge. For ever step I take towards completing the site, It’s taken me ten to get there. Designing the website was a creativity challenge that has taken quite a bit of my time, but this portion of the project has taken about double that. So far I have spent about 25 to 30 hours on this project and still have to work early tomorrow mourning. I’m hoping to have about 90 percent of the site up and running tomorrow (everything except the join email php and the click here to view larger images areas). What I still have left to complete is creation of 3 other templates, uploading additional images, updating the links, adding in the content for the pages, and placing the site on my online server. Sounds fun, right? Creating the additional templates won’t be bad because they’re a play off the original template, and I have all the content and images created, it’s just getting it online. The transfer over to my online server could be a pain, but I’m hoping I can short cut it. All and all, nothings been really hard, it’s just everything takes time and to do it for the first time takes long online searches. Hopefully if everythings approved by this weekend, I can throw it up on their server sometime early neek week, grab their mural website, throw that online and wash my hands of the project by the end of next week. Some good news is that my contact at the valentine is trying to get me more money to freelance for them. She mentioned something around the amount of $25 an hour. I guess the hard work is paying off.
I getting very close to completing my project with the valentine, but i’m still running into issues. Tomorrow, I am planning to have the website built in joomla on my server but I’m running into last minute issues. I’ve been busting butt this week putting probably a good 20 hours so far. Learning to build templates in Joomla has bee tough, but I think it’s slowly coming to an end. Anyways, I gonna end this post early cause I need to finish this work.
Chapter 8 shake down, decisions is the name of the game. Our author describes a general guideline for making a decision. I say general because it is explained that each decision is different and no one method works for all decisions. Throughout the chapter he describes some basic elements of making decisions such as not wasting time on decisions because it might be too late and having key people make the decisions, not a hobo who walked in from the street asking for change because his car broke down on the way to work, but clearly he isn’t wearing pants which gives you a clue that his story might not be that legit. Then the author describes the two different ways to make decisions , including a third secret prize decision, being Singular evaluation, where the first reasonable alternative found is accepted and Comparative evaluation where several alternatives are evaluated against each other before deciding, and the hidden “do nothing” method, where you….. just do nothing. Also a list of important questions to be asked before a decision, are listed to help with the decision making process, including what’s at stake, how bad will this negative decision impact us, and much, much more.
He then goes on to describe how information is very important to aid in the decision making process, but it is not the answer, Oh No! it is a flashlight to focus in on an answer, but it can help save a lot of time when searching for an answer. The reason that information or data is not what’s up is because it can be skewed and not completely trusted. Data could be your life long partner who shoots you in the back when you’re escaping with the plans to arm the satellite for global destruction. Also “no win” scenarios were discussed and the possibilities of good decisions leading to negative consequences. Finally the author talks about evaluating, blah, blah, blah. After reading this chapter, I am very happy to say that it seems that I incorporate these guidelines in my own decision making process. I was surprised to see the similarities and though processes, while reading this chapter. I totally agree that a very important factor to view is the negative consequences to making the wrong decision. In short, this author is spot on and makes reading his material better with each chapter
So, I contacted the Valentine about a price for doing the web updates and I think it’s a go. Very, very cool, but nothings going to start until after I’m done with the project. Other than that, I’m working on building the new site in a test environment. I’ve downloaded a few books to help in the process. How I’m going to go about doing this is, downloading a previously made template and modding it to fit my clients design. This is a huge reason we went with Joomla. There’s already so much content out there that can be used. My projected date to have a complete prototype is two Fridays from tomorrow. Here’s to hoping everything goes well.