Help! Web design problems! Should I take legal action?

I would have asked for my money back from all the people who hadn't given me the designs I ordered - that's not right.

If they accept a job they should finish it - end of story. I don't know what legal action you could take against them. Taking money and not providing the product or service is against the law but whether it is worth all the trouble is another question.

Maybe there is a good-hearted warrior out there who wants to get their name about the forums and would be willing to help finish the design for you? You never know...

what state of completion is the site at? is there a version online or do you have a mock-up of the site?

Depending on the complexity of the project I may be able to help you out (for free of course) but it depends on how much is left to be finished.

No point wasting more money on poor work and incompetent designers. 2k is a lot to pay for no results.

Unless you DIY, legal action is going to cost you a lot more than simply hiring someone else to finish the job. Chalk it up as a costly loss and move on.

Even if you did take legal action and won, all you get is a judgment in your favor. Thats a LONG way from actually getting any money back.

This stuff pains me to read.

Guys look at women and think, "My how pretty she looks!" We cannot wrap our heads around the fact that most women will spend 2-3 hours putting on makeup and stuff to look that way. Or how many years of practice it takes to make things look just the right way. It just does not compute for us.

Asking someone to build your website given the specs you've given is like a man asking a woman to get ready to go out with a full makeup job in 15 minutes, and only giving her a lipstick and some face powder.

As a woman, YOU probably understand EXACTLY what I mean by that!

But when it comes to getting your website built, you're like the man in this scenario. And you don't have a clue what's wrong.

That depends on what has actually been accomplished. You haven't given enough information to determine that.

There's nothing you seem to need that's "custom" other than the graphics. The theme can be built using premium themes. Apparently the people you picked don't pay attention to such things. (Some folks just refuse to consider PAYING for WP themes, period. There's reason they're called "premium" themes -- because they are actually USEFUL in situations like this!)

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I hate to be blunt about it, but it's the blind leading the blind here.

You seem to be asking for three distinct types of tasks:

1) you want a custom (or customized) WP theme developed

this involves one or two distinct skills:

a) either the smarts to pick a premium theme that lets you design a theme easily (like the Builder Theme from iThemes), or the detailed programming knowledge to go in and modify an existing theme;

b) graphic arts skills, to wield Photoshop and/or other graphical tools.

2) you want content created

that requires an understanding of YOUR product, marketing strategy, as well as copywriting skills, and whatnot; that's very time-consuming, and isn't going to be cheap if you want a good job done.

3) you want third-party logic integrated onto the site

This can be simple or complicated depending on how familiar the person is with wordpress and the bazillion plugins available for it.


You're simply saying, "I need a custom Wordpress design", but you really need three different people!

And the folks you're asking probably don't have enough experience or common sense to tell you that what you're asking is not specific enough to elicit valid quotes.

In the world of consulting, it's pretty common for people to say, "yes, I can do that!" and then figure it out along the way. You can't tell looking at their portfolio whether they can do what you want or not. That's like a man looking at a woman and knowing what kind of makeup she's probably using based on the clothes she's wearing. It ain't gonna happen in a million years!

If they're not programmers and don't understand the way Wordpress is organized, and you don't know that's even something to ask, you're not going to be satisfied with what they deliver -- IF they deliver ANYTHING, which in this case it appears they are not capable of doing. Gee, big surprize.

You've made the same inaccurate request of three different people, and you can't figure out why the can't deliver. You're asking for a "fluffy omlette" (ie., a soufflet), and they keep giving you scrambled eggs, thinking it's the ingredients they've got wrong. No, it's the WRONG RECIPE!

And they've got the wrong recipe because you're not actually asking for what you want. (You THINK you are, but you're not.)

Graphic arts people are usually LOUSY programmers. And most don't know squat about database design.

And most programmers are LOUSY graphic artists.

You need BOTH skills to build a content management based website these days. But the vast majority of people seem to think they'll find someone cheap who's got both sets of skills and will do a good job for them. You're deluding yourself!

I'm not trying to beat up on you, but this is such a common problem. I wish I had some idea how to address it. What people NEED to do is hire a project manager, but that's just more cost. However, in this case, it probably would have been much cheaper.

I think your project should have cost a few hundred dollars, max, IF you'd found the right people and stated your requirements clearly. Which you would have done IF you'd known the different aspects of your site and asked the right questions at the outset.

And if you did NOT expect to find ONE PERSON who has ALL THREE SKILL SETS.

As a software developer, I've often wished I could sue my clients for stupidity. They ask the wrong questions, they argue with you about details, then they tell you they don't want to know, just fix it -- but do it THEIR way.

People hire you because you're supposedly an "expert", then they proceed to tell you how they want something done and don't want to hear a word you have to say.

What do you do when you KNOW that THEIR way won't work?

And THEY threaten to sue YOU for not completing the job .... yeah, right.

-David

I'll hit up each question one by one

Not familiar with 1SC but if it's just a payment button, like a paypal button, it shouldn't be more than a simple matter of dropping in your code.

Ok... first off I don't understand why none of your previous developers are using the current WP 3.0 navigation framework. It's a simple matter of drag n' drop from the admin panel to add anything you want into your navigation menus. A developer can create as many custom navigation menus as they want to use in multiple places throughout the site and in the sidebar.

You can add anything to any of your navigation menus directly from the admin: pages, posts, external links etc...

Adding pages is a matter of creating a new page and adding your text content.


Fullscreen pages and posts... childs play Most developers stop at page templates but you can have different layouts for posts as well.

A video that when finished redirects to another page, I have absolutely no idea how to do that.

You can check out my playpen at Premium Wordpress Theme Design It's something I'm working on at the moment for themeforest, it's unfinished and a bit wonky in IE but as far as php, jquery, shorcodes and all of that goodness it's on par with what all of the other premium kids have. It's currently in blog mode at the moment but every post features something different.

are you serious? $2000 I hate hearing of scams like that.

Greedy fat overweight guys that charge the earth. That is not cool?

You need to use the guys in here, warrior forum , some of those guys rule.

A lot of good designers are not good programmers. A lot of good programmers are not good designers. For that reason I will never rely on just ONE person to do everything for me.

This is what I usually do:

1. I usually design the site myself in Photoshop. For more complex stuff I will have my designer create the design or I'll find a psd template I like and then just tweak and edit it to fit my needs.

2. To convert the design to an html site or a wordpress site, I will then go to the people who are best at that. I use Xhtml Team for most of my designs. There are also similar services out there that will convert any psd into a working wordpress theme. I usually send off my design and will have it back as a properly coded html page within about 24 hours - usually much sooner. And it only costs around $40 per page. I can't recommend them enough, they always look after me very well.

3. Once the html is done if I need any further help with php or special scripts, I will usually first search Google and see what I can do myself (you'd be surprised what you can find AND you learn a lot doing things this way) or I will send the work off to a couple of programmers I have been using for years.

Website complete and it doesn't take long at all.

One tip: I always try and have two of each at any one time. So for example, I have 2 designers I know I can use, I have at least two companies that can convert the psd to html, and I have a couple of programmers as well I can use.

I have been using the same people for years and because of the regular work, they are always more than willing to help me rush jobs through if need be.

I find this the cheapest and most efficient way to get projects completed. Dump it all on one person and things will slow down. No one can be great at everything.

Although I don't freelance myself out all the time like I used to years ago, I do take on some special projects for "good" people. I don't feel the need to work for rude people, lol.

I couldn't really gather from your information exactly what you still need done, but I can tell you particular areas that I can help with.

I am great with Wordpress, writing, SEO and especially php/mysql programming (which is what Wordpress uses). I make almost all of my own websites with Wordpress, whether it's a blog or not - so I am used to making customized programming changes to nearly every site I make.

However, if you need a lot of graphic design done (ie, the Wordpress theme), then I'm not your man, lol. I do enough graphics work to get by, but I don't ever sell myself as being a graphics designer (even though I went to art school for graphics and animation, lol). It's just not something I enjoy doing and I don't consider myself to produce really high quality work when it comes to graphics. If we're talking about programming though, that is another story.

Feel free to PM me if you want to chat. I have some available time this week if you want some help with particular things. I don't usually hire myself out cheap (in the $25/hour neighborhood for programming usually), but I can provide quotes for specific amounts of work.

I don't usually run around offering these services to people, but I felt for you when I was reading your post about troubles with 3 designers now. Even though I worked on the freelance side of things for many years, I have done both and completely understand your pain. One of the main things that made me quit freelancing (besides making a lot of money with my own websites, lol) was running into problems similar to this, except I had completed the work and the person who hired me couldn't pay.

How can the third one be "competent" if s/he can't finish it? That is a contradiction.

And web design doesn't have to be hourly, you can have a fixed cost for the job as some people such as myself operate by that basis.

Hi Michelle,

I cant tell you how many times I have heard the same complaint. I am a software engineer located in Jupiter Florida and have helped many people like you in the same situation. If you would like to discuss it further please catch me on Skype 'bluenovaconsulting' and check out my portfolio at BlueNovaConsulting.com.

To your success!
Bruce

Righto! I've just finished reading this thread finally all the way through, that was a mission and a half in itself :p

I'll offer you whole half day to finish your website (with the emphasis on getting it completed so you can "open your doors" the next day, prioritising the essential stuff first).

I say a half day as from reading this thread that is my guess as to how long it would take me (it seriously does look very basic here, barely any coding required by me and the rest a kiddie could do), and also it is only how much time I've got spare.

As I'm offering this completely free, no expectations or strings attached. Except perhaps some good karma from God

Well, I promised myself not to post anymore in this thread because you don't like to hear what many of us were telling you... however, I'll make an exception:

A decent contract worker (like a designer hired to do a job) may ask part of the payment before starting but should never, ever ask for the final payment before delivering the whole work to the satisfaction of the buyer.

While I, usually, asked 50% up front, the second 50% was always paid when the site was up and working and the customer was happy.

No, you should NOT pay anything until you get all the files, the site is up and you are satisfied with the results.

I'm seeing and hearing this a lot now (webdesigners holding business hostage). Heard much worse. Always remember there are two sides to the story as well. You may first try to communicate with them and ask them what the issue is and can u do anything to speed the process as u are losing money daily.

Second option is to complete small claims documents but do not file them.Send them to the designers saying if they do not settle/complete now you will file them tomorrow. Then go file.

Third option is a $100 lawyer letter to scare them.

Fourth is to sue them. No one ever wins and u are only throwing good money at bad money.

I'm sorry u are having so much trouble with this and hate to see this new trend.

I absolutely agree you shouldn't pay her the remaining if you've already paid her most and she hasn't finished.

And I repeat again, if she hasn't finished it in time then she is not competent. That is part of what being competent is!

Also at least her being in America [i.e the same country as you] it should be significantly easier to take legal action. At least here in NZ I know there is small claims court [doesn't cost anything more than a small filing fee, so long as the dispute is under a few hundred dollars or so], which is pretty cheap to go to and you don't have to use a lawyer.

But I know the legal climate in America is VERY different so I kinda doubt if there is a cheap option like this?

But yeah, I wouldn't take legal action while she knows all your passwords... you don't know how she might react.

BTW, I'd STRONGLY recommend logging into your hosting account and downloading a zip file of the contents should she decide to wreck it all. If you can't do this I can, it literally only takes 5 seconds to do [other than waiting for it to download, depending on the size of course].

May I also suggest in the best intentions that from my impression of you it would be a very good idea for next time to try and kindly ask somebody here [or one of your friends who has SIGNIFICANTLY more practical experience doing web development themselves] to help you out in writing out the spec for the developer and maybe even in picking them out.

[for instance if you put it up on one of the freelancing sites, it is a hell of a lot easier for me to pick a suitable bidder from there than it is for you, just because I'll be able to appraise their past work and references with mere glance that you couldn't]

Since when?

As an independent contractor, yeah, who doesn't want to get paid by the hour?

But a web designer is just like anything else.
Draw up the job proposal and take bids.
Insist on a completion schedule.
Use an escrow agency if you keep having such bad luck.
No completion, no money.

I've been reading through this thread, and I really feel for you, being so close to finished but can't quite seem to get there. This morning I came across this thread in the 'Warriors for hire' and made a note to keep this Robert fella in mind for the future myself. Nothing but raving testimonies about this guy.

http://www.warriorforum.com/warriors...-services.html

Check it out and see. Maybe you should cut your losses with this woman who wants to hold your website hostage for her last payment. If you have to, change all your passwords and access codes to your accounts, tell her you'll take care of the rest, cut her loose, and then dare to trust (one more time) a real Wordpress professional and get this thing off the ground once and for all.

If someone like Robert could actually help you out, you might be up and running by next week!

We could do this for you, we often take on jobs half way through projects after customers fall out with their designers. bluebaboondesign dot com

Sorry to hear you've had problems, their seems to be a lot of rouge traders out there with no one to answer to.

I'm not talking about hiring a project manager.

Just getting a friendly soul for next time to write out the specs with you and assist in the selection of the outsourceee. Maybe if you're lucky even get his/her help for free Or just perhaps chuck a hundred or two their way for their time.


As that is the really critical points of the project, at the point you're writing down specs and when you select a person for it.

This is a long thread, which makes this whole issue seem very complicated. I don't think it's complicated at all.

If you agreed to a timeline for completion and/or payment, and the person you hired did not hold up to their end of the deal, then you should have every penny of your money refunded, and that's the end of it. Or... you could come up with a compromise or a new agreement to at least get the job done, but that's your choice to continue working with this person or not.

If you didn't specify, that's a major mistake. It doesn't matter where or how you hire a person, you always need to be very specific about what you want. Not only will that ensure that you are on the same page, but it will also save your butt when you get into these situations.

You said that you requested to use an escrow. That would have been a very wise decision, and I don't understand why you would let the other person talk you out of this, especially considering your first two experiences. Next time, demand it. Usually they will agree to split the fee with you, but if you are dealing with a significant sum of money then you ought to be willing to cover the escrow fee yourself if necessary.

Lastly, why not give a freelancer website a shot? For example, I had an experience like yours, except I was using a site called "rentacoder" to find someone to do the job. They acted as the escrow, so the person would not get paid until they completed the job, uploaded it to the freelance website, and I approved it. When I had a problem, I simply told rentacoder what the issue was, and they would look at the situation. When the person didn't meet the criteria they agreed to (be it timeline, or any other requests), my money was immediately returned and the other persons resume reflected the incident thereafter.

You wouldn't be in this situation if you
A) had been specific, and
B) used an escrow (escrow.com, or a good freelance website, or whatever else...)

I don't mean to rub it in, I'm just letting you know so that you don't end up in this position for a fourth time