From The Archives…A Pissed Off Client
Posted by NorcrossIn digging through some old archives of my previous blog, I found this:
After the events of this week, I remember now why I was always hesitant about working for myself: stability. It started on Sunday, where the person I was rebuilding a massive website (800+ pages) for decided he “couldn’t afford it” and canceled the whole thing. All the time I spent (including 7 hours straight on Sunday…I was in the zone) went wasted. To say I was disappointed would be an understatement. Here’s a brief rundown of how it went:
Him: I can’t do the site anymore. People owe me money, I am still paying for someone to build the ecommerce store, blah blah blah. Also, your proposed setup (using a site structure) is too detailed. I’m not a “path” person.
Me: I understand. Money’s tight for everyone.
Him: I still need you to set up my Dreamweaver installation so I can edit the site myself
Me: I’ve done that already. The problem is your code has no standard structure to it. Your code needs to be set to point to the location of the image.
Him: I CAN SEE THE FILE ON MY MACHINE! WHY WON’T DREAMWEAVER WORK!!! (He’s now very upset)
Me: Because your server files are a mess. And you code looks like someone ate a website, partially digested it, then vomited the code back on to the page.
Him: I’M NOT A PATH PERSON!
Me: That may be, but servers and HTML code depend on them. I can make Dreamweaver upload the files to Burt Reynold’s personal website if I wanted to, but that won’t matter because you don’t know what the hell you’re doing. I can’t make Dreamweaver adjust to your inability to understand and use basic syntax.
And that was that.
I discover more and more website/graphic design is so similar to freelance writing while working with clients.
Everyone who has Photoshop and Dreamweaver thinks that they can build a website. Everyone who has a few fingers and a keyboard thinks they can write (maybe even a paper and pen if they are old skool.)
Just cause you CAN do it doesn’t mean it isn’t going to end up looking like shit at the end. But hey, to each their own, right?
PS – Thank you for never making my site look like shit.
That’s tough. It reminds me of that Oatmeal cartoon where he says he once hired his client and after 13 Photoshop revisions he fired him because it was so awful. So…he wasn’t using even relative paths? My sympathies.