Buying Webdesigner 7 for a client

[Riftvalley]

I have a client who is hugely impressed by WD7. I produce several websites for his business and as the ultimate CMS I intend to purchase a copy of Webdesigner for him.

The intent is that I manage the site but that he has a local copy of WD to enable him to upload simple messages, such as special offers, two for one deals, important notices etc.

He won't be getting into the nitty gritty of the site. If I purchase a copy of Web Designer for him, will he be able to upload .web files created with Web Designer Premium?

If there is any Flash, or widgets, then I wil be producing them and installing the updated files.

I will be responsible for all the graphics.

One area that I am particularly concerned about is that he wishes to have a paypal capability. For security reasons I am insisting that whilst I am happy to assist with paypal widgets and put them into the website he must be responsible for the values entered - can an existing paypal widget be updated with Web Designer or will he need WD7 Premium?

To keep things under control the fewer controls he has the better!

Kind regards

Martin

[AutoEvo]

I can't answer all of your questions but a thought that popped into my head when reading your question was: if your client had a copy of WD7P then could they send you the.web files once created for you to upload to your webhost? Otherwise I'm guessing your client would need direct access to the webhost and they may not understand the webhost control panel and thus end up causing grief for themselves... just a thought.

[covoxer]

WD7 does not support some of the WD7P features so if your desing uses them, it will not be exported correctly with WD7. For example, block text export, sitemaps and layer transitions are not supported and will not be exported (correctly) from WD7.
However, PayPal widget should work just fine.

[Riftvalley]

Many thanks for all your help, seems that I will need to convince my client to cough up an addtional £50'ish and get WD7P. I want him to agree and upload the final document, they are a club and regularly (say every three weeks) have a major show and if they want to sell tickets (up to 1000 at £15 to £20 each) then I want them to be responsible for the final upload (albeit I will sit beside them to get it right!) I don't think my insurance would cover a decimal point in the wrong place ! On the other hand being able to instantly put a 'post-it' note with current special offers on the front page is brilliant. Possibly a future improvement for WDX and XDX would be the ability to password protect specific pages.

The downside is that they may decide to go it alone if the program does all that they want. I currently have a two year contract, but the original contract did not include PayPal so I have room for negotiation.

Thanks again

Martin

[Riftvalley]

I should have added that for an experiment I tried using WD6 to export a WD7 webfile and did discoverthat the widgets, for example, are not exported.

M

[pauland]

Riftvalley, I understand the obvious attraction to your intended scheme, but it has so many downsides that I wouldn't do it myself.

For regular updates you are cutting off a revenue source for a small amount of work. You are replacing a revenue source for a scheme that can and will go wrong and leave you having to pick up the pieces for no or little money and perhaps even get the blame for a client mistake.

If they go it alone with the software, they will mess up and again you will be picking up the pieces and possibly the blame.

If you haven't guessed, I think joint website development between developer and client is a seriously bad idea.

Other people have allowed clients to do simple updates using a placeholder and a simple CMS system. That is a far better idea.

[Riftvalley]

Hi,

Thank you for your comments. I think the issues comes comes down to client relationships, I know the client very well and we work together on several projects outside of web design.

I have already agreed how the update system will be managed, also I don't want to be responsible for updating the sales system.

What I have decided to do is to break up the site into the main site and two sub-domains (I have done similar before and it has worked very well) then I can isolate parts of the website (plus keep each section manageable). This will be invisible to users of the website. The idea really is that the website becomes just part of a marketing strategy and that I keep within the loop.

I have so much work that I can afford to divest some of the day-to-day input for in-house activity and because I know who will be doing the work then my income is based ona negotiated hourly rate for attendance. Like all things it all comes down to how well a project is managed and what agreements are in place.

What I have negotiated is production of the website, in-house training and maintenance - clearly there is always the possibility of divergence, but conversely there is also the opportunity for expansion - clearly I cannot divulge more on a public forum.

Kind regards

M

[xtom]

What you're doing sounds complicated and it's a path I wouldn't go down myself. It's painful enough watching some clients update and ruin limited areas of a site via a cms but to let them loose on the entire site layout and all, yikes. Here's an interesting article I read the other day http://www.thewebsqueeze.com/web-des...-template.html

[steve911]

While this may sound like a good idea, I think in practice you would find yourself constantly answering e-mails and phone calls from your client as as they play around with the program. WD is very addictive and I don't see anyone limiting themselves to a little bit of editing for very long. Sooner or later your client will catch the bug and start experimenting - probably with all kinds of dire consequences.

I think in terms of time spent it will prove to be quicker and less time-consuming to do any updates yourself and limit your client to e-mailing you the details.

[gwpriester]

I agree with these comments. I taught a client to use NetObjects Fusion to update her website and I spent more time on the phone providing free tech support.

Unless your client is software savvy this could be a mistake. And the biggest mistake is to give your client the product. Sell them them product and charge them to teach them to use it. You are a business and not a charity.