Web development

What web development coordination is

Web development coordination is the part of a content job that needs the website itself changed. I write the specification, brief a developer to build it, test what comes back against that specification, and sign it off. One point of contact, one invoice.

I am not a developer. I do not write the code and I do not pretend to review it. What I am is the person who can state precisely what the content needs the site to do, in enough detail that a developer can price it without a discovery phase, and who then checks that the thing built does it. This is not hosting, not a maintenance contract, and not a site rebuild.

When you need one

Four situations cover nearly all of it.

• A new page type. You want to publish case studies, staff profiles or one page per location and the site has no such thing. Each needs the same fields in the same order, a listing page, and a way for a non-technical person to add the next one.
• A template that cannot hold the content. The template offers a heading, one image and a body. The page that was written needs a summary box, a table of what is included and a question-and-answer section. The content gets squeezed in, and the writing gets blamed.
• A form. A quote request that asks the five things your office needs in order to quote, arrives at the right inbox, and sends the person to a real thank-you page rather than a grey bar.
• A set of redirects. Pages have been merged or deleted, and every old address needs to point at the right new one, mapped in one list and applied together rather than one at a time as customers report them.

You do not need this if a careful person can make the change inside the CMS. Editing text, swapping an image, adding a page on an existing template and fixing a menu are website updates, which cost a fraction of this.

What goes in the specification

The specification is where the value of this service sits. A developer quoting from a conversation is guessing, and the guess is always revised upwards.

The content, field by field. For a case-study page type: client name, trade, the problem, what was done, the outcome, a pull quote, two images, a date, and which service pages it appears beside. Named, ordered, each marked required or optional.

What it has to do. Where it sits in the navigation, what the listing shows, how it sorts, and how it looks with two of them and with ninety.

Who edits it afterwards. The point is almost always that your office manager can add the next one unaided. Unwritten, it does not happen, and you get something only its author can change.

The acceptance tests. A numbered list of what I check before signing off: the form arrives at the right address, each old link reaches the right new page, the layout holds on a phone, and the page works with the longest realistic heading rather than the demonstration's short one.

What is out of scope. Written down so it cannot be assumed. Anything touching payments, anything touching customer data or security, and any upgrade of the platform itself goes to your own developer or your hosting company. I say so on the first call, and I will write the specification for them, but I will not put a contractor of mine inside your payment path.

What you get

The written specification. Two to four pages, and yours. If you would rather use your own developer, hand it over.

The change built on a staging site first. Nothing reaches the live site until it has been seen where customers cannot.

A note of what it costs to keep. If the change will need attention when the platform next updates, you learn that on the day it is built, not the day it breaks.

A worked example

An illustration, not a client. A commercial cleaning contractor in British Columbia has eleven written case studies and nowhere to put them, plus thirty-one old pages, merged into eight better ones last winter, whose addresses still lead nowhere.

The specification runs to three pages: a case-study page type with nine named fields, a listing page that sorts by date and filters by sector, a block pulling the three most relevant case studies onto each service page, and the thirty-one old addresses mapped against their eight destinations. A developer prices it from the document without a meeting, and the build takes six working days on a staging copy. Testing finds two faults: the pull quote breaks the layout beyond roughly forty words, and four redirects point at the wrong one of the eight pages. Both are fixed before release on a Tuesday morning. A fortnight later the office manager adds the twelfth case study herself, and nobody telephones a developer.

How it runs

1. A half-hour call. What the content needs the site to do, what it does now, and who built it. Sometimes this ends with me telling you to ring them instead. No charge.
2. The specification. Three to five working days, sent to you before any developer sees it.
3. The quote. One developer recommended, pricing against the specification with a stated number of working days, approved by you in writing first.
4. The build. On a staging copy, one to three weeks for most jobs of this size.
5. Testing and release. The acceptance list worked through and recorded, faults returned once, then released at a quiet hour with the previous version kept.
6. A fortnight's watch. Forms and links rechecked after a week and a fortnight; anything odd goes back to the developer under the original fee.

What it costs

Quoted in CAD after the half-hour call. The specification is priced as a fixed fee of its own and the build is quoted separately by the developer against it, because the specification is worth buying even if you have it built elsewhere. Developer fees are passed through at the rate you approved, with no mark-up. The pricing page shows the four ways of working; development is quoted one job at a time, not folded into a monthly arrangement.

What happens next

A new page type is an empty shelf, so the case studies, profiles or location pages have to be written and loaded, which is page creation now the template exists. Whoever adds the next one usually wants an hour of CMS training on the new fields more than a document. And where the project needs a designer or a photographer too, a single person managing the specialists is cheaper than briefing each yourself. The job is finished when it is signed off and watched; nothing ongoing is assumed.