So a year ago we at work we realised that we needed to have our instruction manual online so our staff can access it easily. I was asked to coordinate this since I'm the closest thing this place had to a web expert at the time. Bearing in mind that this was over a year ago and the library has a perfectly good intranet service I contacted the IT department to ask about getting some space on there to put up the manuals.

IT weren't all that happy at the time with someone else writing web pages so I told them if they wanted I could get the text to them and they could code it.

It never happened. So I loaded it onto a Geocities account while we were waiting.

Last week the department supervisors (and that includes me) were in a meeting where we talked about the need to update the public web pages for our department because they're hopelessly out of date. Again all fingers pointed to me - I have no problem with doing it, it's a break from checking the lists I'm constantly trawling through these days...

So this triggered a memory in one of the supervisors and she asked me to show her how to update the Geocities manual which I then did, but since (God love her) she doesn't really 'get' the web it wasn't the easiest thing to explain. (She ended up using the 'save as web page' option on MS Word)

I know the staff PCs have FrontPage buried on them which (although I hate the programme with a passion) I knew she'd probably be happier with so I again emailed the IT department to ask about the status of getting us the space and access to the Intranet. I cc'd my boss on the email this time.

Got a reply this morning - they are so not happy I put it on a Geocities account and are working on having the files loaded to the Intranet asap. I already have FrontPage access as do three other supervisors in the department, they're going to get the others set up for it by the end of the week (assuming we have enough licenses left to allow that).

I do remember them telling me way back that it would take a long time to get the pages loaded, so when they saw I'd got them running along nicely on a free account they kinda realised I do actually know what I'm talking about and it really doesn't take that long to code & upload them...

Now all I have to do is get the public pages sorted out, and since I'm working to a really tight template that's so not going to be fun....

ETA so within five minutes of me sending the zip files to IT they were on the intranet. We still don't have editing rights yet, but I do have a meeting with the IT coordinator tomorrow.

Amazing what ccing my boss in on that email accomplished!