Your opinion needed on web design

[budgester]

If you think his is bad take a look at the one they've landed us with - http://builth.epowys.net

 

Yup, truly fugly.

[budgester]

This is done in-house by one of our technicians. He was specifically employed with 'web design' in his job description. There's no backend CMS, it's basically done using Dreamweavers templating system.

 

Surely in the days of Web 2.0 thats a web crime in itself ?

[Geoff]

The system (or lack of it) was inherited.

[MkII]

ok, meeting was today.

 

The Head of IT at the FE College, chairing the meeting, hurriedly asked for peoples opinions. I managed to get out about the large graphic centre stage being in the way of content.

 

She retorted with "your SMT person saw it yesterday and liked it, and your Head will see it tomorrow" or: 'you have no backing for your opinions'. I said that these were the opinions of many people i'd consulted, and not just on our schools site.

 

She then said "it's too late now to do anything about it". To which I replied "This is the first time we've been allowed to comment".

 

Apparently DELLS like what's been done so far, but are withdrawing financial support for now. The college will fund maintenance until the end of June (yeah right - still employ the FE moodle coder like they always did), and we'll see what hapens after that.

 

We got a tour of all sites on the server, accompanied by the usual "ooh lovely" "oh I like that" comments from the in house press ganged fan club. No one else said a thing on the subject.

 

It's so sad that with so many excellent examples of great work done already in other authorities, that work as low quality as this can happen.

 

Teachers are dissilusioned and are setting up their own installations on their private webspaces. Students think it's butt ugly and dated. Parents and the public think the same as the kids. 4 schools already (out of 13) have solid intentions of going it alone on a completely different route (Sharepoint/ RM/ their own moodle install).

 

Such a sad sad waste of a golden opportunity.

[maniac]

I've just started work today on our moodle installation which is due to go live in September. Having never actually set up moodle before, I was surprised when I managed to get the basic system up and functional within about 20 minutes! (I already have a webserver with apache and mySQL)

 

I'm now customising it for the school (I'm only doing the look of the site, the director of ICT is responsible for the actual content and functionality) I don't expect this to take any longer than a couple of weeks to get the look right, so 7 months to produce what is effectively a very straightforward customisation of moodle is outragious I.M.O

 

Saying that, our website is a classic example of a school being ripped off. We paid around £5k for our site (http://www.nbc.medway.sch.uk) although it's not bad, works well and does everything we need it to, it's a complete rip off at the price, and doesn't do anything that couldn't be achieved with a joomla based site which wouldn't have cost the school a penny. Ah well, SLT will never learn to listen, they hear the words 'free' and equate this with 'poor' or 'un-reliable' and won't listen no matter how many time you try to explain!

 

Mike.

[GrumbleDook]

I heard a good phrase today to combat the anti-free arguement.

 

"The cost is slightly reduced compared to some other sites but this is partly due to the model of development being more concentrated on having it set up as school-centric rather than a costly technology-centric model."

 

You just know I am going to include that as my example of manglement speak for the future.

 

Translation : We can aford to hsot it on a decent machine and pay for someone to have time to set it up in-house, as we are not paying lots of money to an outside company for licenses, etc.

[MkII]

That's a lot of what has gone on here Mike. The SMT saw that they were getting professional web design services for free (the LEA paid), so they jumped at the chance. As we techs were immediately dismissive of the quality, the college quickly turned their attention to those who were content to put up with it, just because they knew no better.

[Diatom]

Hi All

 

I think the main problem here is with the CIF funding. To qualify for this 'they' were required to show that the project involved a collaboration between schools, and other training suppliers. The idea of standardising the front ends of the site probably stems from this.

 

Personally, I would rather see the plain default that we worked with while the graphic designer toiled away mashing the pixels to create the masterpieces that now adorn the sites.

 

I would guess that 'people' in the know might be rushing off as we speak to set up their own VLEs using Moodle somewhere free of CP interventions.

 

Bob

[TechMonkey]

Couldn't you just quietly make up your own templates and slip them up?

[MkII]

SMT wanna toe the line so I doubt we'll get away with it. So I'm going to have to administer it as it is. A lovely surprise was the salmon pink confirmation box! Our IT Staff want to use their own site, with their own template.

[gwendes]

I would have printed this forum and given everyone in the meeting a copy. How can they expect you to be the one responsible for maintaining a poor system without taking on board your opinion - and the opinion of other IT professionals?

 

Just say that the way it's been built makes it unviable to keep it as it is - tear it down and start again. Building on moodle will have you up and running in a couple of hours - you could even get some enthusastic kids on board.

[MkII]

Rushed off to our easter holidays and didn't have time to add one last comment.

 

SMT apologised to me for undermining me at the meeting with the local FE College.

 

A nice surprise.

 

Going back to the design after a two week break it still gets you down. Great that the initiative is there to get all school involved with Moodle, just wish it could be a nice experience!