I managed to do some webpage work for Dodo Modern Poets early this morning at Birkbeck,namely putting up a web page in their index of poets for their founder Patric.

Sadly the rest of the day was wasted in that although the bar wasn't very busy, I wasn't able to use my new laptop because I'd crashed it when I closed it down yesterday and I took a long process of trial and error to work out how to reboot it.

CAMDEN TRADES COUNCIL: part2, The frustations of attempting to be a webpage/ blog designer.
Oh, the frustations of attempting to be a webpage/ blog designer. I'm about to give up before I've even started. I'm having a row with one client over content, which should teach me no to belong to, or even care, even a little bit about the organisations I might work for. Now CTC having been presented with a proposal, a month ago, which in effect asked them to decide what content they might want on a website and some design basics, eg do you want a logo? (see last entry). Have decided that they can't decide whether to have a blog until they have decided what content they might want on a website and some design basics. Naturally they formed a sub committee to decide this and as my friend who introduced me to them said, we might get a website by about 2020 at this rate and some how I suspect the process could involve me in more unpaid work.

CAMDEN TRADES COUNCIL: Website and/or Blog Peter Murry 14/04/2008

Another role which occupies some of my time is the attempt to get some webpage/blog design/ maintenace work, below is a pitch to a potential client, who I will see tomorrow.

Dave Welsh asked me to prepare a brief outline of what services I might be able to offer CTC in regard to a web presence. I will not be able to be present at the CTC meeting on 17th April, but I hope Dave will be able to table this paper for me.

There two options, a website (cost approx £250 p.a. including updating content) or a blog (cost approx £100 p.a. including updating content).

I have drawn up possible website design (see below)

This is a design for a home page that could link to four other pages (Aims, Join Us, Committee, News, Meetings). CTC could decide it wanted more or fewer pages and
That they should have different content and/or names. Equally the colour scheme, logos, and layout are only rough suggestions. A website has the advantage that a visitor to the home page could rapidly find out some salient points of info re CTC without going through the whole site, but if they want more detailed info (e.g. how to contact the treasurer, what did the last meeting decide etc) they can be directed to pages holding that info. It is possible to add, subtract and rename pages and add subsections of pages within this structure (e.g.; a meetings page could link to archives containing minutes of previous meetings). The links to external organisations are also entirely at CTC’s discretion; the list given is purely illustrative.

Blogs (short for weblogs) are much easier to maintain and so cheaper than websites, the use a ready made design template usually with chronologically organised content centre page and more permanent notices at the side, here are a couple of examples:

1) FPS Blog

2) LSFC Blog

Blogs can contain as much content as a website but it are less accessibly organised and the user has to know that s/he needs to scroll back through previous content to find everything that is on the site

Another option is to link a blog to website page so that the blog can be used as a kind of noticeboard/newspaper for members of the organisation (see: http://gptublog.blogspot.com/).

P.Murry
Peter Murry has been an active Trades Unionist and Green Party activist for over twenty years. After retiring from lecturing he is devoting more time to political and Journalistic work. He is Secretary of the Green Party Trades Union Group and Co-convenor of Green Left. He has regularly contributed pieces on Green politics, education and trades unionism to ‘Post-16 Educator’ magazine (post16educator@runbox.com).

He has designed and runs websites for:
The Green Party Trades Union Group, http://gptu.net/pssess4X/3c/hpage.shtml
The Campaign Against Tube Privatisation. http://gptu.net/catp/catp.shtml
Green Left http://gptu.net/gleft/greenleft.shtml
Dodo Modern Poets http://gptu.net/dmp/dodo.shtml

He runs the Free Painters and Sculptors blog http://freepands.blogspot.com/
And updates the London Socialist Film Co-op site socialistfilm.blogspot.com