HELP SITE UPDATE 5.1.2012

Looks like this space may take the form of an online notepad as I use it to keep notes and thoughts throughout the development of the HELP.PORTERWARE.COM site, which I'll just call the HELP site from here forward. I realize that there is not a big number of hits here, so a lot of the time I will be documenting just for my own records, and also occasionally so I will have a definitive timestamp on an issue or record. This project feels like my baby, so I am hoping to see it through with maximum organizational efforts.

The reasonI think I have gravitated to this project with so much positive energy is because if it is done well, and maintained correctly, there is no question that the HELP site will be a huge asset to our team, to our time management, and to our overall sanity. No other project I have had the opportunity to work on here at Porterware has been this perfect for what I think are my best skills, and which I also enjoy doing. I guess if we were to try to attach terminology to it it would be somewhere between front end web development and technical writing, with a touch of simple graphics manipulation thrown in just for kicks.

Since the bulk of the HELP site inner pages will be built via our standard "service pages" system, all of the items will have a wiki-like quality in that they can be edited and updated at any point by anyone on the team. This allows for each how-to instruction or answer to have room to grow, or shrink, depending on the responses we get to how well each item actually helped the client who used it.

NEXT ITEMS ON TO-DO LIST:

• Begin build out of home page. This should not take too long. The only difficulty might be the gigantic form field but I am sure that is just a styles/dimension issue, no worries

• Build out base inner page that will expand to fit content
  
  
• Create a scheme for formatting the posts consistently as far as fonts & font size, use of bold, use of caps, use of italics, use of color. Being consistent throughout will be VERY important to keep a precision look. NO SERIFS PLEASE.

• Begin transferring post content from this blog to the new site. Refine posts as necessary.

• Survey other team members if there are any common questions they get asked, or help requests they have to field, that I did not list on the original rough draft of the info design spreadsheet

I guess since the spreadsheet and design work I did ended up approved that I should add at least a few hours to my timecard, even though I did the work at home without even thinking about whether I was on the clock or not. Our boss is very fair and cool about those kinds of things.