You know how it goes - you're so wrapped up in your everyday, that you forget to take care of yourself. Or, as the old saying goes, “The cobbler's children have no shoes.” Well, over the summer, Fishhook got a taste of our own medicine as we became our own web client.

You know how it goes - you're so wrapped up in your everyday, that you forget to take care of yourself. Or, as the old saying goes, “The cobbler's children have no shoes.” Well, over the summer, Fishhook got a taste of our own medicine as we became our own web client.

We just moved our site, formerly managed in Wordpress, over to our custom CMS, taking advantage of its robust back-end and features we've grown to love. As best as we could, we ran the project just as we would with one of our web clients, managing all the details via our Basecamp project management program. We brainstormed, designed, programmed, wrote, edited and tested our way to the September 1 deadline. Here are a few lessons we learned: 

  1. When you set a deadline/go live goal, make it realistic! Is there an urgency behind it or is it just some random day?
  2. Form a team to help. You can't do it all, so recruit people to help you write, proof-read, take pictures, etc.
  3. Have a jam session - pull your whole team together, have lunch and crank through your to-do list for the website. Get 'er done and have fun!
  4. Create an editorial calendar for your social media - blog, Twitter and Facebook with intentionality and regularity.
  5. Create a "phase 2" bucket as you go along. You can always keep adding something cool or new, but pretty soon, those can sidetrack you from your original goal.