So, I work for a local park district back home. I won’t say which one. My boss wants me to make a couple of websites for her, because she knows what she does not know, quite the respectable trait. So, I go and inquire around as to how to submit my HTML, and if I could use PHP and get an MySQL database to run a nice CMS to help keep everybody in touch.

Know what I found?

The entire website is written using Microsoft Publisher *AND* The webmistress of the park district site doesn’t know about web technologies, nor how to use anything other than Publisher! I could only stare in disbelief. I thought she was joking. “She’s the webmaster, and yet the term ‘HTML’ goes over her head?” I mean, HTML is only like, what, 13 years old? Of course someone webmastering a government organization’s face on the Internet is gonna know that at least. Of course not. She couldn’t tell me how to make a website other than to get someone else to help me make a page in MS Publisher, because she didn’t know how to do it.

First, came the “blind rage” stage. Everyone and anything connected to website, excluding myself of course, was logically a raving moron and should be summarily removed from the gene pool for the good of Humanity. After cooling down, I came to acceptance. I don’t understand why, but I’ll get something that works now, and work to fix the website that’s an obvious Wrong Thing. Then, I reached Enlightenment™. My rage is not to be directed at those just doing their jobs, not knowing anything beyond what they were told, for they have Ignorance. Ignorance is not a mortal sin. It is easily corrected with Learning. The proper target of my wrath is the event chain that led up to this event, with some key, unnamed, people in this chain. To begin with, it appears that the park district did not solicit bids for their website. There are plenty of students at the local high school in web design courses which would have just loved to not only have a job, but a job running a website that they can later add to their portfolio. And it would have been not only cheap, but effective. But instead, somebody says “Microsoft Publisher” and gets it done. And manages to accomplish every last Wrong Thing that can possibly be done. And instead of teaching the staff how to properly run a website, they are encouraged to simply “use Publisher”. Which makes ugly output, by the way. This short-sightedness and stupidity on the part of the decision makers is not only a waste of tax dollars spent on creating the system, but is doing a disservice to the community with a poor website, that’s often broken, and inaccessible to the visually impared or not using Microsoft Internet Explorer for Windows. Shame on them.

Categories: Geeky Peawee, Life of Peawee