Thursday September 04 2008
Hand off to client
I have almost finished stage 1 of my clients site and we’ll be ready to go live soon. I’ve been working slowly, but steadily on this one. Fortunately my client is in no rush and I am able to really think carefully before doing anything.
Anyhow I’m now starting to think about how to hand off the site to the client for when it goes live. Should I prepare some sort of guide with screenshots on how to update the site. If so should it be online, in MSword/pdf or both? What should be included. One area that concerns me is text styling. When writing something if the client wants to have subheadings how I can ensure that they use h3 or h4 tags rather than just bolding them or typing in ALL CAPS (shudder).
I’m also somewhat concerned about image uploads - how do I ensure that they are resized correctly in order to not break the page layout. I’m sure there are other things to consider, but since this is my first client site, I’m not sure how to proceed.
There is a distinct possibility that I will be taking the train down to where the client lives and provide hands on explanation, but that won’t always be the case. Thoughts opinions?
Steven Hambleton wrote 37 words on Thursday Sep 4, 2008 at 11:32 PM
I like to provide screencast documentation for any CMS sites that I provide.
If it is a static site then a simple email with email settings, hosting settings and details plus a copy of the site (zipped).
Sean. wrote 16 words on Friday Sep 5, 2008 at 06:44 AM
Steven,
Thanks - I’ll probably do a screencast and an email with the email settings etc..
Euan wrote 20 words on Friday Sep 5, 2008 at 11:21 PM
I have in the past provided a pdf with instructions personal to their site as often then include custom fields.
Sean Gates wrote 71 words on Thursday Sep 11, 2008 at 03:14 AM
I’m not sure if you know about the Image Sizer plugin: http://www.lumis.com/site/page/imgsizer/
It allows you to have one image that gets resized on the fly. Therefore, your client only has to worry about uploading the largest image they have available, and Image Sizer will take care of the rest. This also allows you to keep your design from breaking because they uploaded an image that was too big or too small.
Sean. wrote 19 words on Thursday Sep 11, 2008 at 06:35 AM
Euan,
Good advice.
Sean,
Thanks for reminding me of that plug-in. I’d seen it before but completely forgotten it.