A website is born

Throughout January I have been helping a friend, Susan Tilsley Manley, develop and implement her own website. Susan and I have been friends for a couple of years in spite of (or because?) the fact that we are very very different. The trait we both share is enthusiasm and that certainly stood us in good stead over the last few weeks.

Susan's brain isn't naturally wired to think about problems in the same way as programmers and engineers. What seems logical to her isn't the way they put things together. That makes it even more impressive that she persisted through the process of selecting a new web host, moving her domain, learning WordPress and, finally, learning an ecommerce application. On top of that she had to keep her goals for the website at the forefront and also had to do a horrific amount of photography and image manipulation. We spoke on the telephone for an extended period each day, each of us at our computer so we could problem solve together. Every day I expected to find her discouraged or frustrated but she largely stayed optimistic and upbeat. 

She learned to describe her problems to tech support staff verbally and in writing. She learned to stay with the problem at hand and let the others alone for another day. She applied the scientific method (gasp!) to the problem of how to size and crop her photos and to determine the function of other aspects of the software. I am very proud of what she has accomplished and how much she learned in a very short time. And she did it all in the time frame she had allotted!

Go check out her website http://www.susantm.com. Let her know what you think by commenting on the blog or using the contact form.