More Bananas

I’ve been pretty damn busy at work the last few weeks. Lots of long days and some late nights at the office did not leave me wanting to sit in front of the computer to blog upon getting home.

The project which has kept me so busy at work had to do with our content management system (CMS). I’d mentioned before how much of a dinosaur it was; it’s clunky, takes too long to process things and is anything but user friendly. The good news was that the company’s IT department was in the midst of purchasing a new (and hopefully better) system.

The new system was being rolled out this spring. As a web publisher, it would be up to me to move the content of the web sites I maintain from the old system to the new. None of this was news to me; I had been in touch with the webmaster and was fully aware that he had scheduled me in for training in mid-March and I’d have a few weeks of his time for the migration and then he’d be on to helping the next publisher.

I had just dealt with the re-launch of the major web site I look after last month, I was still playing catch up on items that had gotten left behind and others that still needed attention from that launch. Regular readers will remember that the launch was not a smooth one and it left me feeling agitated and irritable.

There I was, taking my time working on the things on my to-do/to-fix list when a wrench was thrown in my plans. A little back story: our company’s web sites have always been slow, this has had a lot to do with the system used to create and host the web pages. On a good day, it takes at least a minute to load a page on a high speed connection.

One of the larger newspapers in the city approached our Communications department with a deal for some ads. They were offering two weekday ads for four weeks. The woman currently heading up the Communications department is a bulldog and a total and complete bitch. Knowing full well that our web sites are in the process of moving onto a faster system, she decided to go ahead and place the ads in order to use up her current year’s budget. The ads she placed were for the major web site that I maintain. As a result of the extra traffic the first two ads brought to the site, it slowed down completely. I and the other publishers couldn’t log in to work on the system and visitors to the site were greeted with a blank screen while the page loaded.

The communications bitch then began moaning to the VP’s and to Mr. G. She spun the tale that Mr. G’s web team (namely, me) were holding up the move to the new system and as a result, the web site was slow and people would stop visiting. She made it sound like I was sitting on my hands keeping the site on the old system when I hadn’t even been trained on the new platform.

Right around the time the communications bitch was stirring up her non-sense, I received a call from the webmaster letting me know that my training for the new platform had been moved up.

I was absolutely livid. I had literally just finished one major project on the site and was working on tidying up the loose ends and there I was being thrust into another substantial project all because the idiot in communications decided to save a few dollars on an ad campaign.

Mr. G was under a lot of pressure from his bosses as the web site he (and I) oversee is a pretty big deal. He wanted to get it onto the new platform and have everyone stop breathing down his neck. To try to gauge how long the project would take, Mr. G called an impromptu meeting with the webmaster, Larry (my boss), him and me. The webmaster told us that the migration would have to be done via copy and paste and that when he tested it, it took about 3-5 minutes to get a page from one system onto another. I nearly laughed in his face. “What time did you do this test?” I asked.

He said it was done during a weekday but I suspected it was either done late in the day or first thing. In the middle of the day (peak hours), it would take 5 minutes just to get to the log-in screen, another 5 minutes to actually log-in and another 5 (or more) to get to the relevant section. There was no way it would only take 3-5 minutes to get a page transferred over.

A plan was hatched; Natalie was recruited to be trained on the new system to help me with the copying and pasting and Larry would review the site to ensure everything was copied over properly.

A few days after meeting with the webmaster, Larry, Natalie and I were trained on the new system. Compared to our old dinosaur, the new platform was sleek, intuitive and fast. No matter how fast the new system was, I knew we were still going to be hindered by the slowness of the old site (where we would have to go and copy the text from).

We were trained on a Tuesday; the hope was that the site would be moved over by the following Friday. I knew there was no way that was going to happen. Regardless, I stayed late a few nights and tried to get as much done as I could during off hours so that the old system would actually perform at a decent speed. Natalie was a great friend, she refused to leave before I did and was always asking for more stuff to do. Considering she wasn’t even familiar with the project or the web site, she adapted pretty quickly and was a huge help.

Try as we might to speed our way through the migration, it was a pretty delicate process. The webmaster had made it seem like a simple copy and paste job. What he failed to relay (or understand) was that all links, images and modifications to style sheets had to be done individually. Most of our pages have an image or a few links. As such, I had to ensure that all images and documents were moved over to the new system (and server); each page took us well over 3-5 minutes to move.

While having Natalie help was much appreciated, it added to my workload too. I had to set up pages for her, show her where the old pages were and go back and make sure everything was done correctly. Mr. G had talked about bringing in more help but I told him that’d just be a case of too many cooks stirring the pot. With more people “helping”, I’d end up spending my time answering their questions and going over their work. I explained to him we wouldn’t be making our Friday deadline and he was pretty understanding about it.

At the beginning of the following week, we were making some progress. I was hopeful that we’d be done by mid-week. I should have known better. I ran into some issues and glitches – some of which the webmaster had not thought to cover – and so I spent about two days idle while I waited for the webmaster to get back to me. A few of his suggestions didn’t work so we had to come up with some workarounds. All of which just added to my list of things to check and come back to once a better solution was found.

I finished migrating over the last of the content yesterday and I spent today reviewing the pages, making sure that all links are going where they need to and all documents and images have been moved over. I sent the webmaster my list of items I couldn’t fix and am hopeful that tomorrow will see some quick fixes and will bring us closer to launching and getting this damn project out of my hands.

It has consumed me these last two weeks, so much so I’ll be laying in bed and right before I fall asleep I’ll remember a page that I have to go back and look at. The web site is relied upon by a large group of our company’s stakeholders so having it on a fast system is crucial to keeping people coming back. We still have a few ads going out so if we can get it switched over in time, it’ll be a coup.

All of this hasn’t been without its costs. I’ve been tired and cranky at night. I was a complete troll a few nights last week. S did well and stayed away while I was in that temperament. Long days sitting in front of the computer staring at code have resulted in some neck and shoulder pain. And I have class on Monday nights so my weeks’ have been starting off long and getting progressively longer with each passing day. All so that the communications bitch wanted to maximize her budget before the end of the fiscal year.

My hope is that everything goes smoothly tomorrow and that I can get back to the other tasks I’ve ignored the last two weeks. I will be taking a day off once everything is settled as I’ve spent more than enough time at my desk at work. I will also be buying Natalie a drink (or five) to thank her for all of her help. Had I had to do the complete migration myself, I would have been spending a lot more nights at the office.

So that’s what I’ve been up to, dear readers. And you? What’s new with you?