[BALUG-Talk] REMINDER: BALUG: meeting: TUESDAY 2020-02-18 Rich Morin...

[Todd Hawley]

 >To avoid problems like that, when I set up a website for a club or
nonprofit (I seem to do a lot of that), I make a big deal of sharing
the passwords with the board or other leaders. "I know you think you
don't know what to do with this, but if I disappear, you'll need it,
and you'll find someone technical who can use it. Keep it in a
safe place." They never do. If I ask them a year later, they have no
memory of that conversation and no idea where they might have put
the passwords.

>I don't know how you get people to save website access information
in a way that they'll find it when they need it. Websites are
magical things that appear if there's a technical person around,
and no nontechnical person can possibly have any responsibility
for it except for possibly signing a check. And organizations never
seem to have an "IMPORTANT DOCUMENTS, DON'T LOSE" folder, either
paper or electronic.

I'm reminded of being asked (essentially begged by a then-friend) to take
over
running a web site for a school for autistic children in Oregon about 20
years ago. The
friend knew I was "techie," although I'll be the first to admit I wasn't
THAT techie.

So I ran it for a time, then got told by the school they wanted to run it.
I said fine
and spent about 30 minutes on the phone one afternoon with one of their
employees explaining
how to upload files to a web site. This person apparently didn't think it
was
important enough to take notes because a few days later, he emailed me
begging me
to tell him again (with several PLEASE's in the email). I being really
annoyed by his
increibly whiny note told him to take a hike. Someone else from the school
contacted me
later and I had to explain the whole process again to this other person. A
fellow web
designer told me later I should've told her to google FTP. I wish I'd
thought of that!

Checked the site 3 months later, noticed they'd put up new content and the
next time
I checked the site, it was gone. I'm not sure if they forgot to pay for
domain registration
or the place went belly up. So, all of my work was gone. <shrug> I tried
telling my friend
about all this and he told me he didn't want to hear about it. I'm not sure
if he had become
fed up with the place himself (his son was attending school there for a
time). Funny how
he never once offered a thanks for my help, in fact a couple years later he
stopped
speaking to me.

So yes, I too have encountered the clueless "non-techie" members of a group
who want
to have a website, but don't want to be bothered with the responsibility of
having one.

-th
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