SHARE THIS

Following a complaint by resident Tricia Mezzacappa that I have administrative control of the Borough website, WestEastonBorough.com, it was “suggested” by Borough Manager Pete Rossi that it was time to relinquish that control.

Mezzacappa, I was told, believes only the Council President, Dan DePaul, should administrate the website.

I am only too pleased to comply. Honestly!

I quickly realized I had been given a gift of giving the headache I brought upon myself to benefit the Borough, to someone else. If a resident has a complaint about anything on it, or not on it for that matter, it falls to someone else to spend the time uploading, editing, correcting, and republishing. If it develops problems because it isn’t maintained or coding becomes outdated, the new administrator can find and correct the problem.

I had been worried that in a few months when I would have been satisfied with the website, my desire to pass the baton of everything except keeping it up and running, would have only resulted in nobody wanting keep it updated with new Borough information and those chores thrown back in my lap.

Having already spent over 100 hours of time developing, tweaking, setting parameters, uploading information, updating, and maintaining it without charging the Borough for that time, I look forward to those responsibilities being given to someone who, because one resident thinks position correlates directly with website knowledge, can keep the website functioning correctly and put in the additional hours needed not only to finish it, but ensure coding updates are performed to ensure it remains accessible to the public.

I informed Mr. Rossi that I had already prepared levels of access to the website, each level allowing the assigned user the ability to make changes, dependent upon the level they were assigned.

Mine had been Administrator. The highest level, allowing access to the computer language coding of the site. Some changes to a website can only be made by manipulating this coding. Make an incorrect change, and the site will crash. This level will be assigned to Council President Dan DePaul. At this level he will also have the same permissions of all lower levels of access. He can add or delete information provided to the public, as well as reassign user roles, or delete and add users if required.

The next level, which will be assigned to Mr. Rossi, will be that of an “Editor.” It has almost the same level of access as the Administrator, with one of the exceptions being that he can not access the actual coding language of the website.

Another level assigned will be that of “Author.” This one I immediately assigned to Joan, our Borough Secretary. She can add or delete information provided on the website pages, as well as post events to the calendar section.

I worked with Joan already (Mr. Rossi wanted me to show her, rather than him, since he is only here for a short time longer). Her access level is one of the simplest and she was familiar with some of the functions provided, such as the WYSIWYG editor panel. She knows how to copy & paste, as well as upload files to the website, so she is ahead of the game. It is unlikely anything she accesses, or changes she makes, will ever crash the site.

The worst that may happen is some items may not be aligned correctly, or appear strangely when viewed by a visitor. Problems that can be easily fixed with some additional editing. There will only be a learning curve on how to navigate through the control dashboard and a few oddities within the dashboard that she may not be familiar with.

I told Joan that I will be happy to assist her for any minor problems she may have. I already removed some items that weren’t important enough to others on Council to contribute to. One was the Council bio page. Basically, I cleaned up the site, to make it less cluttered. The link to “Contact Webmaster” at the bottom of the website now emails Mr. DePaul, instead of me. I removed my name as the designer, because, honestly, a year down the road, I’m not sure what the site will look like.

While I’m willing to assist Joan, my providing free service to keep the site up and running has ended. That is the responsibility of the Administrator and I can’t teach Mr. DePaul things it took me 10 years to learn on my own and with the help of people far more learned than me in website development.

The hand-over will occur following the conclusion of the next council meeting in June. I will provide Mr. Rossi and Mr. DePaul access to the website with their assigned user roles. I will then remove my own user access as Administrator which they will witness.

Dan DePaul will also receive sole access to the hostserver account. Another responsibility of a site administrator. On the hostserver site he can do needed backups of the website, check visitor logs, clear error logs when they get filled, adjust bandwidth requirements, create any needed subdomains, use the FTP service, and lots of other fun things, including entering the database to make any changes needed there.

I promised a working website and I delivered. It is incomplete, but it has been decided my service to the website is no longer required. It is not for me to argue. It is, after all, the Borough’s website and I have already provided the necessary warning about possible results in trying to appease one resident. If it comes crashing down in 3 weeks or 3 years from now, the Council can then vote on how much they want to pay to fix it, or build a new one.

I believe Palmer Township’s website only cost them around $6500, with additional costs incurred when they desire changes made to their site. Websites are far more advanced than a free blog provided by Google.

As our website was constructed on a WordPress foundation, those with access should be able find a lot of useful guides on Youtube that can assist them.

I’m looking forward to having many more free nights and weekends.

UPDATE 5/27: Some residents have noted to me that this post appears as though I might be angry. I assure you that I am not. I have no animosity toward Mr. Rossi for approaching me about it, or with Mr. DePaul believing he is capable enough to administer the site. “Surprised” would be more accurate, as I always wonder how it is, a tail is able to wag the dog.