I don’t often talk or blog about website projects but this fun one about getting a site up and running (or jogging at least) in 24 hours is interesting to show how easy it is to get online really.
So here is a how I got John O’ Connor’s pub The Idle Hour online in less than 24 hours.
I was out for a couple of pints before The Specials gig in his pub The Idle Hour which is located on Cork’s Quays near the City Hall on Monday night. I know John for over 25 years and he is genuinely the salt of the earth and has made the pub a great place to visit. He plays great music and there is a genuine community there. I have never pimped my website design work at him and I wasn’t even sure if he even knew what I did. So I was surprised as I slurped my pint when he moaned a little about having some problems with his Facebook. He asked me if I could help as he said “I knew about that stuff..”
As I was having a drink I didn’t want to start into a long discussion so I said I would call him the following day. He was of course fine with that. Off for pints, concert, bopping, moshing oh sorry on with the story.
I woke the following morning and there stuffed in my pocket was John’s phone number (God be with the days!), I called him and we arranged to meet in his pub around 4 O’ Clock and get him going. We met with his laptop and credit card and using the easy interface of Blacknight I had hosting and Domain name registered for him in under 15 minutes. Cue a couple of pints and analysis of the upcoming Ireland game.
By lunch the following day the .ie had been approved and I had received the details I needed. So all was well.
Theme Alert
Now for this exercise I had told him that I would use a theme. I have hundreds of themes and had downloaded some decent responsive HTML themes the previous week that ticked the boxes for him. All he really wanted was a landing page to advertise the pub and I had snapped a few pre pint pictures the previous day with my iPhone so had some basic material.
I fired up my trusty Notepad++, connected with filezilla and in a few hours (perhaps 3) I had created the site. By 4pm I had something reasonable and the core work was done. 24 hours up and running.
Where are the Awards?
Now this site isn’t going to win any web awards. I still haven’t put Analytics or added it to Google Webmaster tools. And it is a HTML theme so isn’t a classic design. But 99% of people cant tell the difference and people will use this mostly to get some basic information on the pub. John plans to call and sit down in the Grange Web Design office in the next week and we will hammer out some more gritty detail for the site and add some more pages to it to make it better from a content perspective but we are on the right route.
He doesn’t really care about having a content management system as we have arranged a Heineken based update fee which will suit both ends so all will be well in the front.
The Web designers who look at the site may roar about W3C and lots of other shite but that wasn’t the focus of this. The goal was to get someone who really thought it was a massive deal to get online up and running with a website. Now he is and he is getting new posters for the pub proudly showing his site.
I am happy as I like John and I also like Heineken (Murphys too if it must be said) so we are all happy on that front. I may develop a (bigger) beer belly but that is the price we pay for our craft.
John’s pub is online at http://www.theidlehour.ie and he is open most days from 5pm drop in and say hello. I may even be there discussing website updates (cough cough).
