D+7

Now we’re a full week late. The Account Manager doesn’t really seem to care. He’s off looking for more customers. The engineer doesn’t know how to respond – so doesn’t try.  I’m flying completely blind. Every now and again I check the development site to see that some of the changes I requested have been made. I feel I have to pester the engineer, to show him the remaining 20% of links where he’s overlooked making the media open in new windows. I ask him if he’ll now work through the Chinese side of the site and make all the corresponding changes. No answer (of course). I don’t have any confidence that this team could provide the e-commerce and .pdf download experience I want.

Then I start to think about how I’ll maintain the site using Wordpress after the website has been finished (if ever!).  The thought of my website being held to ransom on this developer’s server makes me go cold.  I read up on Wordpress, and check it out on my webhost’s site. Sure enough, they run a fast install of the Wordpress admin workbench, which I’ve now set up. All I need to work out now is how to get the development site away from the Chinese developers and loaded onto my webhost’s  server.

The developers have just come through at 8pm saying that the English site is finished (again). I’ve just gone back and pointed out that some media are not opening in new windows, and the main headline on the home page still contains a spelling error.

(There are also issues relating to spacing between the bullets and the text, and before and after a hyphen – but I can’t face another discussion with a developer who can’t understand what I mean about these finer points of grammar. I’ll fix them myself later).

The Sitemap and Community pages are not visible. I think he’s refusing to add them in because they weren’t in the initial brief. I still need them though, so I’ve asked again about whether that is still happening. No answer.