This is a collaborative blog post. Pat's additions are shown in brackets, and the text is italicized.

I have a good friend in the adjacent county that is an excellent, experienced Joomla website developer, Pat Vanden Bosche. She recently completed a redesign of the Lobelville, TN, website. Lobelville is pretty progressive for a small community that is little more than a village in rural, often depressed, Perry County. Our local mayor noted Lobelville's strategic move and asked Pat for a quote. They agreed quickly.

The bulk of what appears below was written by ChatGPT. Good reasons, all. But, that's not really the reason I use Ubuntu Linux.

Years ago when Windows 8 appeared, I considered it to be a disaster. Microsoft had gone off the deep end with their concept of a user interface. Things that used to be simple got complicated. I was very tired of having to reinstall Windows after some period of time; Windows got slower and slower; malware was a constant threat. While I learned to troubleshoot Windows pretty well, fixing it was never that easy.

There is a plugin for ChatGPT for Joomla and the JCE editor.  Here is the output from a command I gave the plugin: 

Write 300 words about using joomla as the preferred content management system for a small business or non-profit organization

Getting someone to light on your website is a lot like baiting flies with honey. We use colors that fit the emotions and interests of people you want to bring into your website. The wrong colors are like vinegar to flies.

While previous steps depended largely on listening to your client, asking the right questions, and discovering what the client doesn’t always know he needs, it’s time now to synthesize—put it together.

In part 1 of Thinking Things Through, I described some of the methodologies I’ve used for software development. When I Google “website development methods,” what I see from multiple companies are variations on one or more of the software development methods. Usually, they look like a typical waterfall process. Snip the circle, straighten the circle into a line, and you have the waterfall process.

Before jumping on a server or your own workstation, take the time to create a plan. Don't get hung up on creating a plan document. Creating a plan is about planning, not writing. Know what you are going to do, how you're going to do it, where you're going to do it, and how and when you will involve your client.

There are no shortcuts to thinking things through. There are tools and methods that can greatly help people think. I've discussed some of the ways of systems analysis that I've learned over the years to help me think, understand needs, and even listen more carefully to what people and organizations need. 

Local government websites are among the worst. Why? Govtech.com says, “Though government websites have become one of the chief ways of communication, their upkeep is rarely a priority for any one person and often on the bottom of employees' to-do lists.” Describing the problems, Civicplus.com says,