New Web Site for the union.

(or how I stopped worrying and learned to love the web)

It all started in a pub, The Lamb in Bloomsbury, just round the corner from UNITE’s Theobalds Road Offices.

https://www.thelamblondon.com/

We had just been on a “social media” training event put on by the union, where a very nice young man realised quite how wide the digital divide really was, when one of the attendees told him that they “didn’t believe, in that interweb rubbish”.

I was enjoying a fine pint of a local beer called Hopadelic,
(honest it’s from By The Horns, Brewery https://bythehorns.co.uk/2020/02/17/hopadelic / ),
when spotting a moment of weakness our branch sec pounced.

“Do you reckon you could build a web site?”

“probably, how hard could it be”

There you have it, the die was cast, I madly backtracked , but came away promising to “look into it”…..

Time passed, and my extent of “looking” went as far as finding our current website and deciding it was fine, and any way I’d need some one to give me access to the university server it was sitting on….

Then as so often happens fate decided to piss in my, (and everyone else’s) chips.
How was I supposed to know as I supped my beer way back when, that a global pandemic, would have every one working from home,for months making union meetings impossible except on Zoom, and every day contact with our members a logistical nightmare.

On top of that the University social club closed for ever, (i’m not putting “good”), and the ZX81 that our website is sitting on is going to be repurposed by the University to research astrology or something.(I may have got that wrong…)
The upshot was branch needs a new website and I wasn’t clever enough to dodge the bullet…

I hatched a new plan, if I made some vague suggestions,someone was sure to come up with something better, put themselves in the frame , and get the job, nice!
So I lashed up some ideas on a free image editor (pxlr)and emailed them around, then I discovered Google sites, and how easy it was to knock up a goodish looking result, its a bit like Lego.

I had a Zoom meeting with Branch Sec, showed him my pics and it went a bit quiet as he tried to sound positive about the multicoloured vomit  he saw on his screen.
Vanity got the better of me and I cracked, explaining that the mock up only looked like it did so it was easy to see the different sections, the side didn’t have to be yellow and purple with red text and a blue background. “oh no” I said “why don’t you have a look a the Google site”.
“That’s the sort of thing we want” said he, “you may as well get on with it, WordPress is the thing, oh and we will need hosting and a URL”.
So that was that my mouth had written a cheque my brain didn’t think it could cash, and unlike in Top Gun I was unlikely to save the free world, or get the girl…

Here’s a thing.The University provides access to linked in learning, and while an awful lot of the stuff on it is stuff like “How to make your workplace more agile with a vertically integrated matrix management approach” and “PowerPoint how effective is it as a method of torture?”, it also has quite a good course on soldering (except the bloke kept saying soddering)and quite a lot about WordPress…
Armed with that Google and WordPress for Dummies (that’s not a joke), I set about website building.
Now I might be a bit thick, but WordPress is a big jump from Google sites, you don’t have to know HTML, but it helps, its not so much like Lego more like that Fischer Price stuff all the clever kids had, or maybe Mecchano, or a train set…I’m drifting….

To give you a clue, there is WordPress.com and WordPress.org and they are the same but different. Dotcom is a one stop shop for websites, that you can get a free account on (until you need advanced stuff then you pay) . Dotorg is the supplier of the software that runs your site its free but you need to find someone to host your site etc. Obviously dotorg is more complicated therefore all the tech folk insist its better.
So i get a free account on dotcom fiddle about with the settings and I have a rudimentary website, a bit of mucking about with themes and templates and I have an all the whistles and bells website, I’ve got slideshows, and carousels, and moving pictures and tweets, photos of departments, photos of penguins. I love it and its bloody awful. However I have got to grips with the basics of the WordPress editor and can see a way forward.

Up to now I’ve avoided any commitment, its all gmail and free accounts, but now its time to spend someone else’s money.
It turns out that the techies are right the complicated dotorg is better for various reasons than the nice simpleish dotcom.
I’ve also decided that its better to get the site name from a different company to my webhost (mor complicated, mor betta).

I spend a couple of days researching hosting providers,then pick one at random,do the same with the site name, flash the cash and Im now the owner of a website, bloody hell, that’s like a grown up.

This time i want to do it right.

I decide what the site is for (To be a virtual noticeboard for the union, and communicate with members.)This means any clever stuff will have to pull its weight.(and no penguins). Its also got to be  colourful, fun(for my sake) and easy to update, to keep it relevant.

I sketch ideas out on the back of those laminated maps of buildings that we have with a dry wipe marker one A3 map per page.
This gives me some idea of the shape of the website.

I pick a wordpress theme, some colours, and start with the editor.

It turns out you can pay someone a couple of hundred/thousand/million and they will do you a site in no time. Well its taken me months, admittedly im fitting it in in my spare time, but still its a lot of work.

Whats worse is im not finished, i don’t just mean I haven’t got the contact pages up yet,(I haven’t, or sorted out the email or a million other bits, cookies, privacy, search engine optimisation!)
No i mean its like painting the Forth Bridge, you need to keep feeding in content,( I know, that’s not what painting the Forth Bridge is like, but you get the picture).
The plug ins need updating, legislation keeps changing, the penguins creep back.
Also I was hoping to dump the running onto someone else, but I’m not sure I can let it go now.
It doesn’t help that I decided to set up an Instagram account to go with the site, ( we have a Twitter, Mark does that, thank god)
Instagram must be the most user unfriendly mobile app I’ve come across, I must be getting old.

The whole thing has been done on my Chromebook with as much free stuff as possible, so if you want to try you don’t need expensive kit.

Any way its up its at uniteuoc.org.uk, if you fancy a look, it is what it is, for better or worse, a work in progress.
Just remember, if you are sitting in a pub enjoying a pint and a smooth talking Branch Sec says “can you make a website” Run…. Just Run.

(Some of this is true, all names have been changed to protect the innocent, apart from Big Vern who deserves all he gets)