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Jul. 13th, 2003 10:03 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ewtNeed advice from geekpeople out there, particularly anyone doing webby stuff in the UK.
Yakar, where I do office work and web 'design' (read: I try to design a site, my immediate superior tells me to do things with it that actually look REALLY bad, and doesn't give me a chance to implement them in a way that does not suck), is selling the building it uses. The synagogue bit will go and find some other premises to use; the classes will get farmed out to other institutions. A lot more stuff is going to go online. My immediate superior will almost definitely not be staying on.
I need to think about the possibility of continuing to do website stuff for Yakar, without my boss being around. In many ways I would like to do it just to keep my 'foot in the door', so to speak, in the community. It will also be useful to have a job that I can do pretty much completely remotely; I am going to uni in September 2004 and it would be good to have some income that is not going to be dependent on me travelling up to Hendon (teaching is going to get tougher). I certainly will NOT be doing it for the measly £6/hour that I am currently paid. I'm no longer willing to do much of anything for that little. I'm thinking somewhere in the neighbourhood of £10 would be better.
If I do this I would like to have some sort of contract where I am on a fairly fixed income. If I know how much I am earning per week it will be a bit easier for me to budget. Something where I am paid a certain amount per week up to a certain number of hours and then get paid more than that if I end up doing more, would be ideal. I'm willing to regularly spend 5 or 10 hours a week on it; more if necessary, and if more is necessary regularly then at the end of September this could happen.
In the office I do some website stuff but mostly other things - making posters, adverts, phoning people, maintaining the database, making the tea, doing the photocopying, attempting to do filing (insert rant about my boss' filing system here), e-mail... you name it, I've done some of it. When my boss goes away I fill in and do her job as well, which is essentially more of the same. I do not want to do these things in future if I keep working for Yakar; I do not particularly enjoy the organisational side of things. If I continue, I would essentially like to only get involved on the publishing side, whether that is making posters and adverts or doing web stuff I'm not particularly bothered, but I don't want ot have to organise the actual events and classes. Someone Else can do all that crap.
At the moment the website is a bit of a mess because it is ages since I was allowed to spend more than about an hour a week on it, mostly changing and updating individual pages. I don't know Mason or any of those other fancy things, I abhor frames. If the website needs to become more complex, I will need to either learn some stuff, or give in to frames. Changing 'the bit at the bottom' on several hundred pages (there is a Parsha and a Weekly Thought, every week, and they get their own page...), or indeed 'the bit at the side' individually in each file is not something I wish to do, and not something that I consider to be efficient. My skills are not what they could be but I am willing to learn if it will be worth my while. I kindof like doing webby stuffs.
Questions time:
Bear in mind that the rest of the people who work here have even less clue than I do, and if I leave it to them to decide, I'll probably end up getting done (it's a registered charity, folks). I am willing to make some concessions to them as a charity, but I am NOT a charity, and I do not want to do this if it is going to be more hassle than it is worth. So far most of the hassle I have had in this job has been to do with working with my immediate superior, who has different priorities for my time (why should I do my work when I can do hers?), and different standards, and has been generally disinterested in the website stuff. I don't know what it will be like to work directly with the Rabbi, or whether I will have to do so (someone else may be doing the organisation bit - I don't know who).
Whatever happens, the transitional period is going to be a bit of a mess. We've got a diary of events and stuff pretty much sorted for the autumn and now we don't know whether we're going to do any of it, or where it will be done if we do it! Argh! It is likely we will not have much of a physical office at all.
Yakar, where I do office work and web 'design' (read: I try to design a site, my immediate superior tells me to do things with it that actually look REALLY bad, and doesn't give me a chance to implement them in a way that does not suck), is selling the building it uses. The synagogue bit will go and find some other premises to use; the classes will get farmed out to other institutions. A lot more stuff is going to go online. My immediate superior will almost definitely not be staying on.
I need to think about the possibility of continuing to do website stuff for Yakar, without my boss being around. In many ways I would like to do it just to keep my 'foot in the door', so to speak, in the community. It will also be useful to have a job that I can do pretty much completely remotely; I am going to uni in September 2004 and it would be good to have some income that is not going to be dependent on me travelling up to Hendon (teaching is going to get tougher). I certainly will NOT be doing it for the measly £6/hour that I am currently paid. I'm no longer willing to do much of anything for that little. I'm thinking somewhere in the neighbourhood of £10 would be better.
If I do this I would like to have some sort of contract where I am on a fairly fixed income. If I know how much I am earning per week it will be a bit easier for me to budget. Something where I am paid a certain amount per week up to a certain number of hours and then get paid more than that if I end up doing more, would be ideal. I'm willing to regularly spend 5 or 10 hours a week on it; more if necessary, and if more is necessary regularly then at the end of September this could happen.
In the office I do some website stuff but mostly other things - making posters, adverts, phoning people, maintaining the database, making the tea, doing the photocopying, attempting to do filing (insert rant about my boss' filing system here), e-mail... you name it, I've done some of it. When my boss goes away I fill in and do her job as well, which is essentially more of the same. I do not want to do these things in future if I keep working for Yakar; I do not particularly enjoy the organisational side of things. If I continue, I would essentially like to only get involved on the publishing side, whether that is making posters and adverts or doing web stuff I'm not particularly bothered, but I don't want ot have to organise the actual events and classes. Someone Else can do all that crap.
At the moment the website is a bit of a mess because it is ages since I was allowed to spend more than about an hour a week on it, mostly changing and updating individual pages. I don't know Mason or any of those other fancy things, I abhor frames. If the website needs to become more complex, I will need to either learn some stuff, or give in to frames. Changing 'the bit at the bottom' on several hundred pages (there is a Parsha and a Weekly Thought, every week, and they get their own page...), or indeed 'the bit at the side' individually in each file is not something I wish to do, and not something that I consider to be efficient. My skills are not what they could be but I am willing to learn if it will be worth my while. I kindof like doing webby stuffs.
Questions time:
- How much time, on a weekly or monthly basis, should I expect to spend running a fairly small website with regular changes on it?
- How much lead time do I need to ask for to ensure that changes are made when wanted? I can't just drop everything to update the website, it will have to go into a queue. A week? A month for really big stuff?
- How much should I charge per hour? Should I have a fixed weekly contract after which I get overtime? Help!
- How should I word my contract (I am not doign this without a contract document of some sort, and I'm pretty sure if I want one I have to write it) to make it clear that organising the actual events is SEP? I really don't enjoy that part of my job now and I do not wish to continue doing it.
- How hard is it to learn Mason, or other tools for making websites easier to maintain without using evil frames? What other tools are out there? What else do I need to learn?
Bear in mind that the rest of the people who work here have even less clue than I do, and if I leave it to them to decide, I'll probably end up getting done (it's a registered charity, folks). I am willing to make some concessions to them as a charity, but I am NOT a charity, and I do not want to do this if it is going to be more hassle than it is worth. So far most of the hassle I have had in this job has been to do with working with my immediate superior, who has different priorities for my time (why should I do my work when I can do hers?), and different standards, and has been generally disinterested in the website stuff. I don't know what it will be like to work directly with the Rabbi, or whether I will have to do so (someone else may be doing the organisation bit - I don't know who).
Whatever happens, the transitional period is going to be a bit of a mess. We've got a diary of events and stuff pretty much sorted for the autumn and now we don't know whether we're going to do any of it, or where it will be done if we do it! Argh! It is likely we will not have much of a physical office at all.
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no subject
Date: 2003-07-13 02:16 am (UTC)2. a day, a week
3. uhh dunno bout that
4. i do web design and i get paid $10/hr american
5. learn macromedia product line
no subject
Date: 2003-07-13 03:24 am (UTC){K tries to convince herself that her degree materials are actually useful in the real world}
no subject
Date: 2003-07-13 04:53 am (UTC)I don't know much about stylesheets. I use them a little teensy tiny bit for things like 'make all the link text this colour' but not much else.
When I've used them for that sort of thing I have found massive browser-compatibility issues cropping up; I feel a bit hesitant about using them for entire bits of things for that reason. I'd kindof like the pages themselves to be readable and navigable in just about any browser there is (although I do want to use tables, which lynx does not like much...it'll still read them, it just doesn't lay them out very well), and it sounds like a giant faff to use css in such a way that this would happen.
With Mason this is all done server-side and it generates the html files and as far as the browser is concerned it just sees html.
I'll certainly give it more thought though - thanks!
no subject
Date: 2003-07-13 09:14 am (UTC)2. 5 days
3. If you can average the time you spend per week out, then arrange a contract whereby you get a fixed amount per week, thats easier for you (reliable income) and them (easier accounting.)
I'd suggest #15/hr.
If you go with the contract, arrange a clause stating it's only for regular maintenance and updates; major works, or emergency out-of-hours stuff, are extra.
4. Just have a list of defined responsibilities, and make sure its understood and signed off.
5. If you can get your head around it, XML/XSL seems to be the way of the future, and definately use CSS stylesheets. No need to make them hideously complex; but it'll make maintenance a lot easier. If you don't already know any templating languages, then you may as well learn the one thats becoming the standard..
no subject
Date: 2003-07-13 02:13 pm (UTC)2. Often, if I find I have a free chunk of time, and if I know what I need done, I'll do the changes to the pages I need, then leave my self a note to remind me to upload them to the site.
3. I dunno. Do what you feel is best.
4. *looks a little lost*
5. Try Macromedia Dreamweaver- that's what I use (yes, I use icky frames... but they work well for my site, I find. - particularly with 2 languages and needing two separate menus, etc.)
no subject
Date: 2003-07-22 09:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-07-22 10:00 am (UTC)Come to the mulberry-picking picnic expedition thingum (http://www.livejournal.com/users/ewtikins/53667.html) if you can get to London that day...
Thanks for the comments re CSS and so on. Had a meeting about the webbly stuff today, and it will be a smaller job than I expected, so I will not really have to learn much.