After weeks of feeling things were out of control, I said my prayers and my eyes were opened to all the bugs I had missed previously. Now most of the design elements are working fine. As of 20 minutes ago I managed to get the site to validate. Every page tested so far is perfectly valid and looks great. At least, in Firefox. Har har. It’s mostly the same in IE, shoudn’t be noticeable but I’ll see if more can be done.
The problem can, of course, be resolved if the world were to come to its senses and stop using IE. I wish.
I’ve had mixed feelings working on this project. During conflicts of opinions at meetings, I felt like retorting, “Who’s the designer – me or you?” but held myself back. It made me remember why I stopped working as a web designer by profession and started managing vendors. It is tedious work. The designer is not always appreciated or noticed – until something goes wrong. Usually it is not something plain ‘wrong’ either but somebody didn’t like the look. It’s very subjective.
Some things I had planned to do were changed, after I had done them. I felt it looked like I was delaying the project as I made the extra changes that weren’t planned. Also, I hadn’t planned to spend so much time on the project as I had other work to do. Spiritually, it got me feeling down for a while and I didn’t feel like going to church anymore. I actually skipped the previous week’s service, but it was also partly because I was unwell. I haven’t skipped a church service in years, apart from the times I was on holiday.
4 years ago when I designed the current church website, it started off difficult as people didn’t know I could design – until I just went ahead and designed the site. Then they cut me some slack and we got things done quickly. This time round, we started off well, but then things got almost impossible for me. While moving to a CMS is definitely a step forward for us, I don’t want to look at another Joomla template in a long, long time. I am not a programmer, and never claimed to be. I prefer building my own code from scratch, not starting off with someone else’s multiple stylesheets. It’s been a messy affair especially as everyone has a say in the design I’m working on. The team’s nice; we just have very different ideas at times.
Still, ultimately we aim to please God and not men. I hope everything turns out for the better and we can look back on this and learn from it.
I hope to wrap up this project soon and get on with other things. I have too many ongoing commitments and too little time to myself. The little time I have left, I blog. Sleep is usually sacrificed, like what’s happening right now.
Signing off…
Comments
Hiya, glad to see you’re up and doing some coding too. anyhow you’re right about design subjectiveness. But I guess its different from culture to culture. It seems to me everyone here is a designer and we’re reduced to nothing much but FA work.
In my previous life, in a foreign firm, they seem to take, you’re the designer, you tell me what’s good. of course its not that hunky dory but its alot easier.
like you, i just do what i can and work together, its more like a compromise that anything else which may not be in the best interest of communicating what the site intentions where. but oh well.
My guess its the selling that’s just as important. maybe i just lack the selling skills. shrugs.
back to fixing a damn bug. stay pretty.
Sounds frustrating … I don’t think any designers like templates, how could they? They wouldn’t be designers then. But I guess the bigger frustration is with people and what they want. Church can be tough, but its where we are moulded and shaped- unfortunately it comes with a lot of pain (esp bruised egos).
well done, Vanessa!
any chance of a sneak preview?
Hi David, we’re aiming the launch the site on 7 October so we’ll keep you in suspense until then 🙂