Ours was the company that he was hosting the website with; he was doing the web "design" himself. The problem was "Why isn't the page I uploaded showing up when I load my domain? I can see it when I go directly to the page..." I explained about the list of default pages that the server he was on was looking for, starting with index.html and working down from there, and he wanted to know why .pdf was not an option and what he could do to change that.
Now, on the face of it that's a reasonable technical question, and the tech part of my brain was saying "Well, we can ask the guys at the desk if they can add the thing to the thing, or maybe the index page can redirect to a .pdf..." and then the smart part of my brain told the technical part to STFU a moment and asked the guy why he wanted a .pdf as the main page of his site.
And then there was the long pause with the frantic search for something not-profane. It was very clear that at least from the front page, that "looks exactly the way it's intended to" was not mission-critical, just about unity of user experience with a person who was at least vaguely familiar that different browsers rendered things differently.
Fortunately for the what-I-think-of-his-expertise factor, this was a customer who did not have any particular great opinions of his own expertise, but was perfectly willing to try and learn how to set up a website anyway, so he was open to someone with more expertise imparting some knowledge unto him. The trouble was, while I could have talked all day about how he could make his website not suck, my role was just hosting support. I didn't have the time that it would take to properly educate him, and the call was running long as it was. Stupid metrics.
***
Oh *goodness*. At least they changed the password. I don't suppose that the salesguy knew how to set up a folder within the main folder, and an FTP account that was restricted to just that folder, or even had access to create such things. *sigh* Which is another thing that I instructed customers on -- you want someone to be able to upload shit, but not fuck with the whole thing? THERE ARE TOOLS FOR THAT. LET ME SHOW YOU THEM.
***
Oh my. Oh myyyy. That sounds like quite a bit of doing. At least the client's happy?
no subject
Now, on the face of it that's a reasonable technical question, and the tech part of my brain was saying "Well, we can ask the guys at the desk if they can add the thing to the thing, or maybe the index page can redirect to a .pdf..." and then the smart part of my brain told the technical part to STFU a moment and asked the guy why he wanted a .pdf as the main page of his site.
And then there was the long pause with the frantic search for something not-profane. It was very clear that at least from the front page, that "looks exactly the way it's intended to" was not mission-critical, just about unity of user experience with a person who was at least vaguely familiar that different browsers rendered things differently.
Fortunately for the what-I-think-of-his-expertise factor, this was a customer who did not have any particular great opinions of his own expertise, but was perfectly willing to try and learn how to set up a website anyway, so he was open to someone with more expertise imparting some knowledge unto him. The trouble was, while I could have talked all day about how he could make his website not suck, my role was just hosting support. I didn't have the time that it would take to properly educate him, and the call was running long as it was. Stupid metrics.
***
Oh *goodness*. At least they changed the password. I don't suppose that the salesguy knew how to set up a folder within the main folder, and an FTP account that was restricted to just that folder, or even had access to create such things. *sigh* Which is another thing that I instructed customers on -- you want someone to be able to upload shit, but not fuck with the whole thing? THERE ARE TOOLS FOR THAT. LET ME SHOW YOU THEM.
***
Oh my. Oh myyyy. That sounds like quite a bit of doing. At least the client's happy?