I've found in the end is that the simple most effective way to fix it is to simply put instructions in the code with comments and do your best to instruct them on the details.
If you don't work for a company and it's a private client you're dealing with who are desperate to make the updates themselves (and, understably, not pay you for your expertise) then they will either have to develop their own expertise (point them in the direction of a short course or you can teach them), or they can make mistakes.
Updating a website without a CMS is a task for anyone. If they want to benefit from having a webpage, then they can either learn to do it or send the work to someone who knows how.
In the end, it's like owning a car, either you get it repaired by a mechanic or you try to fix it, break it more and then get it repaired by a mechanic anyway, but at least with the later, maybe you've learnt something.
In the end I gave up trying to teach every client and became a CMS developer. :P
~Dave
Bert Doorn wrote:
I design sites to be standards compliant (usually XHTML1.0 Strict). This is ~supposed~ to make maintenance easier, and it is for me since I
know what I'm doing (or at least, I think I do)
However, I get many prospects who want to update sites themselves. In many cases, these are very small businesses with just one or two people, none of which have any idea about (x)HTML. Most of them have very small budgets, so they can't afford a complete "CMS" type setup (and it's not the kind of thing I can supply) and they tend to only want a small site (a few pages) for next to nothing.
Is it just me, or is this a common dilemma? Apart from abandoning standards compliance (not an option as far as I'm concerned), setting the site up in HTML4.01 Transitional and letting amateurs wreak havoc with Micro$oft <FONT>Plague, what options are there to design standards compliant sites, letting clients maintain them and still stay within web standards?
Yes, I know there's things like XStandard, and the confusingly named FCKEditor. However, these (as far as I know) require server side scripting and the client would have to have write-access to the files on the server (or a database driven site), all of which increases the cost.
What other options are there, apart from complex, expensive CMS setups (or forgetting about standards)?
Regards
-- *~Dave Elkan *munch munch*e:* [EMAIL PROTECTED] <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> *w:* http://www.zigzig.net *w:* http://www.edave.net ****************************************************** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/
See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list & getting help ******************************************************
