Visitshaftesbury.co.uk what happened

Visit Shaftesbury Tourism Site - The Truth

There have been various stories circulating Shaftesbury regarding the http://www.visitshaftesbury.co.uk/ website. The information below is written by Graham Jones who was one of the contractors involved in designing the website.


In February 2006 I was invited to quote for the design of a Tourism Website for Shaftesbury, it's main requirements were to conform to a proposal document that had previously been the basis of quotations received by the Town Council in mid-Late 2004, these previous quotations had been the subject of press reports querying their cost and were believed to be in the region of £18,000 - £28,000.

In addition the website had to conform to Web Accessibility Guidelines and adhere to the British Tourist Authority (Visit Britain) guidelines for Colour schemes, fonts and content.

The proposal we came up with was based up on all the aforementioned items and additionally had the added facilities of FULL CONTENT MANAGEMENT meaning every aspect of the site from it's Logos, Colour Schemes, Pictures and Textual Content could be amended by the Site Editor.

It was decided to subsidise the development of this project and to this end a quotation of just £6500 was submitted.

Why Subsidise?

The decision to subsidise the development of this project was taken as both Ulike Systems and Mole End Design wished to have a local showcase website in order to promote further business within the local area. If the decision had not been taken to subsidise the development the quotation would have been considerably higher, but nowhere near the 2004/2005 figures of £18,000 - £28,000.

During the Design and development of the website, no monies were invoiced until various 'benchmarks' were reached. We reported to members of the then current 'Website Working Group'.

A variety of designs were produced, approved and refined, whilst the technical operation of the website was developed, taking into account the various editorial and managerial levels that would be needed to administer the site.

A series of progress meetings with members of the 'Website Working Group' ensued and towards the end of May 2006 it was concluded that the website had more than fulfilled the criteria required. In fact additional functionality had been incorporated in order to ease the administration of the website.

At all times the pages of the site were checked for conformance to W3C and Bobby Accessibility standards. These standards often overlooked are crucial for interoperable websites giving accessibility to all.

Although it was not part of the requirement a considerable amount of time and energy was expended in obtaining content for the site as there was no single co-ordinated body responsible for providing such content. This however was not envisaged as a problem as the entire website was to be content manageable and thus unlike 'static' websites, the content is separate to the design and thus could be added to or amended at any point in the future.

The website at this point was in effect complete and ready to be handed over to whoever the Shaftesbury Town Council/Shaftesbury District Task Force was going to appoint as Site Editor.

At this point the website was moved from our testing servers to the live server and payment for this hosting was made by ourselves.

We were then informed that a pre-launch demonstration of the website would take place on Friday 16th June 2006 in the Shaftesbury Town Hall.

This demonstration of the website would illustrate the ease of amending and adding content to the site. I also expected some constructive criticism as well, but that is always welcome and expected when showing a website to a wider audience.

It was therefore a total surprise when the scheduled demonstration detiorated into nothing more than an squabble between various members of the invited audience and the the people demonstrating the website.

Questions as to the procedures followed in obtaining the contract were raised; quite simply, we were asked to quote, a quotation was prepared, quotation accepted and work commenced, standard practise really!

People who felt that they should have been on the Website Working Group 'rubbished' some of the content, which as previously mentioned could be changed almost instantly, if they had had the courtesy of allowing the demonstration to proceed, they would have witnessed this!

A few constructive comments were addressed but on the whole the meeting was 'hi-jacked' by a vociferous minority who in my opinion were just aggrieved as they had not been appointed to the aforesaid Website Working Group and thus had no influence on the design of the website. This as the contractor was really not my problem, I answered to the Website Working Group and they were more than pleased with the Website design and operation, but of course they, unlike the vociferous minority, had actually seen it all working.

It was not possible to demonstrate the ease with which the content and 'look and feel' of the site could be amended as some of the people present were more intent on just disrupting the whole procedure.

I have never witnessed such unruly and rude behaviour from elected representatives and people with diverse personal axes to grind.

In one word Disgraceful.

Further to this abortive meeting, various members of the Website Working Group resigned in disgust at the behaviour they had witnessed.

A week later I was contacted by the Town Council and asked to attend a meeting, whereby I was questioned as to the procedure that had taken place in the lead up to being awarded the contract to develop the Tourism Website. I explained how the initial meeting with one of the original Website Working Group members had led to the quotation being prepared and submitted and the various meetings that followed as the website was developed. At this meeting I was instructed to undertake no more work on the website, this was academic as the website was in fact complete and only awaited our final payment being received before it would be handed over.

I was also instructed at this meeting to 'switch off' the website.

A while later a letter was received informing me that the 'Website Working Group' had been disbanded.

Over a month later I was then asked about 'handing over' the website, I confirmed that once full payment had been received the website would be handed over to the Shaftesbury Town Council.

However as far back as July another Company had been approached, without our website ever being fully demonstrated to an audience wider than the original Website Working Group. Bear in mind, most of our sites special features were password protected and therefore unable to be seen, unless demonstrated by us. This Company was then awarded the contract to develop another Tourism Website and redevelop the existing Shaftesbury Website they had produced some years ago. The funds having been allocated to this project on 4th July 2006. (see extract below: Policy and Resources 4th July 2006)

I then realised we were not ever going to get to launch our 'local showcase' website, despite the immense effort that had gone into it's design and implementation.

I was approached by numerous, people in Shaftesbury and beyond who asked what had happened? When I explained they implored me to set up our own websites to showcase our abilities and actually work for Shaftesbury. This seemed logical as in the previous 2 months alone we had developed 5 new websites for businesses in or near Shaftesbury.

So a decision was made to use our latest Content Management Database Technology, about to be debuted in a revised Pubsulike website, a website that currently receives over 40,000 visitors per week, as the technology for our new Shaftesbury Websites.

These new websites now provide the only Shaftesbury Websites to offer completely free
online updateable information for everyone. No politics, just impartial, accurate, up to date media rich information.

Current Situation:

Payment as of 23/12/2006 has not been received and therefore the website has not been handed over.

The Future:

I am not really sure, in the meanwhile I for one and I know several other Website developers will be looking very very closely at any websites that do eventually appear and we will be paying particular regard to Web Design Standards, Accessibility and conformance to the
various bodies that our website had paid particular attention to.

It is a sad fact that not one of the existing Shaftesbury Websites, OURS EXCEPTED conform to even the most basic of Design and Accessibility Standards, just try the W3C Validator or the Bobby Accessibility checkers to see what we mean!

Our new Shaftesbury Websites are up and running using the latest technologies, providing up to date accurate and impartial information. We confidently predict that within the next 2-3 months our Yahoo and Google page rankings and placement will exceed the so called official Shaftesbury sites and in these days of people 'Googling' for an answer that is all that is going to matter!

http://www.shaftesburyindorset.com/

http://www.visitshaftesburydorset.co.uk/

Remember 'Content is King' and 'Quality Counts' so with those two maxims in mind we look forward to providing quality affordable website solutions throughout 2007.


Council Minute Extracts

Below are various extracts of Council meetings pertaining to the Websites.

Policy and Resources Committee 21st March 2006 - extract
Anna McDowell – spoke to the Committee as Chairman of the Tourism
Sub-Committee and requested the release of funds from the Website
Capital Programme. It was reported that the tourism side of the
website was ready to proceed and that it was likely the full £15,000
allocated to the project would not be needed. Mrs McDowell then
tabled two ideas for the branding exercise and requested the
Committee’s comments on the two options. Opinion was divided and it
was noted that STAG had first to adopt the style and it was hoped
that, from this, it would be adopted by the working group.
.................
The Clerk requested the Committee’s instructions on the release of
the website funds and it was AGREED that the Tourism Sub Committee
could now drawn down on these funds.
.................
Policy and Resources Committee 4th July 2006 - extract
Members proceeded to discuss the report tabled by Mr Shepherd and
his request for funding for projects to the total of £9,650. The
Clerk reported that the Tourism Sub-Committee budget had remaining
funds of £8,846. Members professed themselves impressed with the
plans tabled and it was proposed by Cllr Reynolds and seconded by
Cllr Harvey that funds be released:
RESOLVED: That the remaining funds in the Tourism Sub-Committee
budget totaling £8,846 be released to Shaftesbury and District
Tourism Association for the completion of projects as listed, with
additional funding being considered at the next meeting of the
Grants Sub-Committee if required. The P&R Committee request three
monthly budget reports from the SDTA with an explanation of any
significant variances. (Policy no 0706/PR/3.1) (Budgetary provision
– Tourism Sub-Committee budget) (Statutory power – LGA
1972 s 144)
Members debated the current situation with the website and it was
reported that any further works had been suspended pending a
completed investigation. It was proposed by Cllr Dibben and seconded
by Cllr Reynolds that the current working group be disbanded:

RESOLVED: That the website working group is disbanded and its
functions and responsibilities removed. (Policy no 0706/PR/3.2) (No
financial implication – Capital Programme fund suspended)
.................................
Capital Programme Monitoring Sub-Committee held on Thursday 7th
September 2006
Mr Dennis Hughes – Requested that when referring to the website
Councillors’ indicate which of the four websites they are debating.
The Chairman responded that two of the websites were inactive but
confirmed that Councillors would use the domain name for
clarification in their discussions. Mr Hughes asked whether the
independent evaluation of the Ulike site had been received and it
was reported that this was still in progress. It was also suggested
that a formal contract between the Task Force and the Town Council
for the website work would be a benefit bearing in mind previous
problems which had been experienced. It was AGREED that the Clerk
would investigate this. It was confirmed that the Task Force were
meeting on the 14th September to discuss the proposals from the
Management Group and further confirmed that the Town Clerk was a
member of the group and had been placed there as a safeguard by the
Internal Auditor. Mr Hughes expressed concern over the ability of
the Task Force to deliver on the project and the Chairman indicated
he would be happy to discuss this with him at a later date however,
he drew attention to the partnership between the two bodies and the
benefits of having a non-committee based Management Group whose
remit was to deliver.
.................................
Policy and Resources Committee on Tuesday 26th September 2006
6b) Website
The Clerk read out a confidential report and the following was
AGREED:
· That the Clerk would pursue obtaining the domain name, original
photographs and content of the website from Ulike Systems and would
make the initial approach but use the Town Council solicitors to
draft the final agreement.
· That the Town Council solicitor’s advice that an independent
evaluation of the site would be cost prohibitive be accepted.
· That the Committee did not wish any further interviews to be
conducted and that a final report would be presented to Full Council
on 29th November, when it is hoped the outstanding issues with Ulike
Systems will be resolved.
.........................................