The site the Verein will run itself
The Ukrainian Verein's site reached its last phase: I added a simple CMS, so they now manage almost all the content themselves. What's left is waiting on their texts and photos.
By Georg Malahov
The website for the Ukrainian Verein — an association of Ukrainians here in Germany, whose beginning I already wrote about — has been running since April, and today a big phase of it closed.
First, a short recap of what happened in between. In April I bought the domain and registered it in Ukrainian: fewer risks that way, or so I'm told. On May 8 we met and signed all the paperwork: the development contract, the follow-on maintenance contract, and the data-processing agreement. On freelance work I've never had contracts at all, so this is my first project with a full set of documents and signatures.
And today I finished the last phase's fixes. The main one: I added a CMS to the site in its simplest form — a content management system, an admin area where texts and images can be changed without a programmer. The Verein now manages practically all of the site's content itself, except maybe the labels on the buttons. That feels like the right outcome to me: an association's site shouldn't depend on whether its developer has a free evening. Updated the project board, sent the folks a report.
The hardest part turned out not to be the code but the content. Back in April I suggested a separate page about the head of the Verein, and if any good testimonials and interviews turned up, adding those too. They liked the idea, but gathering decent photos and interviews isn't working out for them so far. And I get it — that's genuinely hard work, much harder than it looks from outside. From my side I offered my wife's help — she's a photographer and videographer: a proper shoot would settle half the question.
What's left until the end: wait for updated content from the Verein, wire up analytics and a cookie banner, submit the site for indexing — and open it publicly.
Funny thing is, the most important part of the project already feels behind me, even though nobody has seen the site yet. The tool has been handed over to the people who will use it — from here the site fills up with their texts and their photos, not my placeholders. Waiting on the next round of feedback from them, and then we finish.