Ozob the Blog Monster

The continuing saga of our college website
or "The Neverending Story Was Taken as a Title"

I've been working at my job for almost ten years. At the time I was hired, there was general agreement that the college website was a little bit old fashioned and needed to be replaced.

But, other than a few cosmetic changes, it's still the same website today. Attempts to update it over the years have been few and aborted by lack of interest.

Finally, the college president laid down the law: he wanted a new website up by May 1, 2006.

It is nearly a year later, and we're still waiting. The website is being run by our Enrollment and Planning Department, and they've been working over 18 months on trying to get things done. With a speed that makes a glacier seem like a cheetah, they hired someone to handle it. The contracts were signed in May 2006.

Then the information trickled out. The new site would be ready the end of September, 2006, so everyone had to convert their pages so it can be put into the new format. Everyone worked hard to meet an early September deadline.

The website was going to take longer. The consultant hadn't realized how many pages it involved (despite the fact this information was in the contract). It would be ready in November. No, December. No, we needed to get the server ready in December, so it could go live on January 31.

At the end of March, they held the first training sessions in how to use the new system. After the training, the training accounts were disabled, so people wouldn't be able to practice on the system. I pointed that out, but got no answer.

About three weeks ago, I discovered I could log on and try editing my web pages. No notice of that.

Finally, early this week, the college president said, "Do it by May 3, 2007." The web managers waited until yesterday at 6:00 pm to tell anyone this. Everyone has four days to check their pages and fix them (and, remember, all information is over six months old).

Stay tuned. People are already saying the deadline is much too short.

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