Forum Moderators: LifeinAsia
So. How do I keep clients from doing this? It seems to me, with the small businesses that I work with, telling them that they will have no access to their site -- that only I can make changes, loses them as clients for me. They don't want that. What do I do here? How do you guys handle this? Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks!
It is their site to do with as they will - after they have signed off as accepting it and have paid you in full. And it is their right to request totally tacky designs from the beginning - whether you actually agree to build such sites depends on your stomach strength, your quality boundaries, and the price.
One: I would remove the "designed by" that mentions you. No need for you to be portrayed as the tasteless one.
Two: I would keep the original design available as a portfolio sample but without a link.
Normally the client buys the site copyright with acceptance of the site (I do not know your contract specifics) and is then free to change, mutilate, and spindle or hire their daughters boyfriend to do it for them.
This is one reason many designers no longer advertise their design or maintenance involvement on the site. Also many companies refuse to allow such notices prefering the public to think it is all done in-house.
Portfolios do not have to be of current sites - just sites you have designed.
And Welcome to WebmasterWorld - where we all share the knowledge that comes from the joys and miseries of our experiences with clients good and bad.
Sometimes clients messing with code can lead to more work.
Mack.
One option is to place the orginal site in a sub-directory of your own and link to that instead. The downside is that people may look at the URL and think that you haven't done any "real" sites for actual clients.
Or you could link to both versions, state that the client maintains the site and has modified your original design, then offer the option of "view actual site" or "view original design."
A little extreme, perhaps. But then I've never had the problem you're having. The real answer is to find bigger clients who aren't interested in maintaining their own sites.
Thanks for all the repsonses.
Mack: Yeah, you're definitely right -- if they mess it up and I have to fix it, it's income I hadn't counted on. But, I'm still concerned with my name being associated with that mess up!
johntabita: (Just call you John?) You're right, too. Would be great to find the bigger clients who have no interest in maintaining their own site. Since I'm just starting out, though, I'm mostly getting the word-of-mouth thing (friends of friends type thing), so they are all really small players. I imagine that as I'm doing this longer and build my reputation a bit more, that will change. I do like your idea about maintaining the site as a subdirectory of my own and just offering the link to the live site with the statement that they've modified it. So, until I get those bigger clients who have no interest in messing around with my design, it looks like that's what I'll have to do. Great idea, thank you!
Sharbel: I know what you mean. I don't have any problem with them having the right to do what they want with the site after it's designed and paid for. It's theirs, through and through at that point. My problem was only how I keep from having my name associated with their "changes" when I'm advertising their site on my own. Sure, they have the right to do anything they want, of course. I just wanted to know how you guys either prevented it (if it was at all preventable), or kept from being associated with what is now, because of their changes, a really badly-designed site.
Buckworks: Ah yes, good point. Thanks!
You could list each sample of your work with details of what you did for them:
Company X
http: //...
Our services included the overall site design, incorporating some flash animation and a cart system.
We continue to provide expert hosting services to Company X although they have chosen to maintain the site on their own.
<img...>
It could look something like a resume.
You never know when it will come back to haunt you.
Someone DID follow a designed by link on one web site (nothing we worked on even) and threatened to send his lawyers after us for the infringing content!
I know that sounds confusing, let me explain:
We took over a few hosting clients from a company that went bust, and they had "built by..." on all the customer sites. We also bought the domain name as most the clients were linked to their DNS server which we took over to ease the migration process.
Then someone found something on a site that the previous owners built that he claimed infringed on his copyright, we didnt host it and had no access to it, but he came after *US* like a rabid dog! Took a strongly worded email before he went away and didnt come back.
For Too much information: I actually had my site set up similarly to that with just screen shots of pages I wanted to show off. There were 2 problems with it: The first was that I was getting e-mails from people asking why the links didn't work. Can you imagine this? It really is true: you need to "write to" a 6th grade level in order not to confuse anyone. Sheeesh. So I decided that perhaps it was better to have the live site available to people so they could see how everything really worked. My second problem was that, of course, stuff like Flash etc is going to be lost on a screen shot.
For incrediBILL: Ugh, what a nightmare. I'm definitely taking my designed by logos off -- as most of you have said, they're not of much use anyhow, and I sure don't need any of the kind of problem you describe! Thanks for the warning!
