I've been a web designer for quite a long time now, so I can assure you that these are the best tricks to piss off your webmaster, and possibly end up with a voodoo doll of yourself on a geek's desk.
Any similarity with real people/events is purely coincidental and no-one should feel targeted, I've made this list solely for fun.
So here it is (in no particular order):
Pre-reserve your domain and hosting with a small and obscure foreign web based company.
Assume that those who made your website also inherited the technical support for your emails.
Send all your texts on plain old paper, but not handwritten. It's important that the guy who has to retype them knows that there is a digital version somewhere.
When the webmaster ask for your logo, give him an old business card that was in your wallet for the last 3 years.
When he ask "what you would like to be able to change by yourself in your website", answer "everything!". And when the site is done, send him your stuff instead of changing it yourself.
Ask him a for "plug & play" quotation, Ex.: "I'd like a quotation of the site with and without a shopping cart, with and without the gallery .." and so on for every single part of your site.
Send him drafts, let him integrate them, then send some corrections.. iterate over and over until he collapse crying in a corner of the room.
Although you don't know anything about the web (and proclaim it), insist that the web designers do the site exactly like you want it instead of what they think would be best for you.
During the initial meeting, brag that you will write all the needed texts over night and send them back the next morning. Then give no sign of life for the next 3 month and call back asking "Is my site done yet ?!"
Tell him you need a Youtube like website but with Facebook functionalities and the simplicity of Google. Of course you have a very limited budget and the quotation must be on your desk for the next morning.
Bonus: When you receive your quotation argue that your nephew can do it for a fraction of the price in his basement.
UPDATE: I posted a follow-up blog post...
awesome, i live this list on a daily basis...
Wow, speaking of going off and crying... :) I went through hell and back twice for clients because of #1.
Okay, some of these (4,7,8,9) have made me cry before. It's good to be laughing now.
Nice. MAKE MY LOGO BIGGER and use more red and yellow in the design. I have a brick tile I want to use as the background. Is that cool?
That is EXACTLY right!
Don't forget to choose 7 different fonts to make that design more "dynamic"
To the Anonymous dude who wants a break.
Did you even read the article ? I make website .. no SEO. Seriously, where did you read SEO ? It's not even a service that we offer where I work, and we never did ;)
And it's not because your friend got screwed that everybody will screw their customers. Anyway, your point makes no sense and is totally out of context.
You also missed the part where I said that I've done this list solely for fun I think.
Have a nice break.
I have a current customer that started off with #7 for 1 month, then rapidly switched to combination of #8 and #3 for the next month and then in early January, appears that he switched tactics to #9. That and he wants a landing page with a really obscure script font that only comes with some models of the iMac. Gee, no, I don't have any qualms about embedding text in a transparent image so that the 99% of people that don't have that font installed can see it the way you want it.
In my time as IT manager for a web dev company, I've seen all of these many times. But #3 was our worst; the number of clients who insisted on faxing printed Word documents to us was unbelievable! We finally avenged ourselves by advising all clients that our fee for retyping faxed documents is $275.00 per hour, in whole hourly increments. Or they can email/snail us the Word document and have the content included in the original quoted price. It worked!
Stumbled! Upon this list of "top 10 tricks to piss off your webmaster" from our Web Hosting Company Blog and have succeeded in avoiding this by preparing professional contracts and outlining provisions with a down deposit prior to any undertaking of web development projects.
This is like group therapy :)
Number 8 is hands down the most common phenomenon I encounter as a designer. Why it is that business owners--with nothing to lose and everything to gain--think that their ideas are somehow going to trump those of a designer (who lives and breathes this stuff) is utterly beyond me.
Couple that with budget planning like #10, and that's 25% of my client base. People. Get REAL. You can't start a business on a SAVINGS ACCOUNT.
Every point is painfuly spot on! Well done
Jesus, I've just red twelve years of my life resumed in ten sentences. I hate you, whoever you are.
Wooo, from any corner of the globe the same problems!! amazing! it seems that you're a clone of mine :D:D
i can relate to all of them :-P
Every single word is perfectly true. Best thing we had yet: "Make that line half a pixel thicker..."
Uh.. That's so right. Just got a letter from my client with some fancy drawings (made by hand) and some texts to put on the new website. There are about 2 sentences for each page - that'll look good ;D
You could add to the list the beginning - when you send the client the layout #1, with the first bill. Of course you will advice them that it's just a picture. What ever you tell them, their answer will still be "The site looks great but the buttons dont work. Also there is some problem with the texts - they appear to be in latin." You tell them about the image again. Thats when they start wondering the price - quite much for an image...
anyway, this means, that they approved your layout - and you start coding.
When the coded version is ready the feedback will be "Looks quite nice. This centered page looks a little weird on my office's computer. There is awfully lot white space. Also the images are too small. Resolution? I dont know.. (1600 res) Well, it should look the same on every computer. You can not scale the headerfoto? .. Lets also change the colour scheme to a little lighter. Lets try red as the headline-colour, its more effective than the green (The green came from their logo, of course.. and red is ... you know, red.) And the pages are too long - can't fit them on my screen. I read from somewhere that the customer should not have to scroll.."
And you'll start explaining .. and re-designing...
Finally, when everything is about ready the feedback is: "Great. Everything looks great. One more thing. We decided, that there should be backgroundmusic on the page, and some transition would look nice, when changing pages. And on the 1st page ... there should be recent news changing automatically."
Well.. you'll talk them over to not to start over with flash - and to not to have any bgmusic.. or if you do some weird frame thing that makes it possible to have a continous bgmusic... they will ask you to remove it in a couple of weeks. You also build a nice news -system for them, that allows them to add news, shows 3 recent on the indexpage.. and you make an archivepage.
After 3 years, the only news you can find, will be the example you put there: "Our new website opens.."
Uh oh.. sorry.. didnt mean to write this long... its just ... grouptherapy ;D
if you would like to exchange links with www.abbb.com.au please go to http://www.abbb.com.au/pages/linkexchange/form.html
story of my life...
Thanks for the info
piss you all hahaha
very true statement, also good ones.
This has me crying, because it is true, especially #9!
Awesome!
You forgot one item: Always use a hard-to-read-without-hurting-the-webmasters-eyes contrast like white on black.
@Bjorn
Is that a sarcastic stab ?
If that's the case, next time at least double check your assumptions.
It's funny how just like most people who call themselves web designers who happens to nitpick me about my choice of colors for my Blog, you assume that my background is "black" and my text is "white", when they are not.
My background is #111, which is not black and my text color is #ccc, which is not white. This contrast ratio was especially chosen to avoid that "glowing effect" on characters that actually make negative contrasts hard to read (mostly on old CRT monitors). Furthermore, line and character spacing have been tweaked to enhance readability.
Readability on the web is a complex balance between colors contrasts, text size, line and characters spacing and colors. Yes the "optimally" readable combination of colors is dark texts on light background, however it doesn't mean that light text on dark background are inherently unreadable.
If you find it hard to read, that's your personal preference.
Here's for your eductation; http://www.aprompt.ca/WebPageColors.html
One last thing, if it's so hard to read, why did you read it ? Seriously ?
I turned off your site's CSS because I get dizzy reading light text on dark background on a screen, so that guy isn't alone.
Yes, yes and yes. I'd laugh, but it's not funny.
What can I say? I love it can I post this on my blog? http://seoopinions.blogspot.com/
Yes, that's the story of my life.
I had customer complaints, only to find out that they forgot to renew their domain.
I had pro bono "clients" who thought I'll be their developer, support, copywriter and administrator and all this for the price of a picnic meal :).
One can say, I had them all. :)
@Ron Krause
Yep, as long as the credits and optimally a link to this post are present.
Glad you liked it ;)
I can relate to all of these. Basic client relationship management, "hand holding", is 50% of the job. Accounting, billing, quoting, invoicing is another 25%. Troubleshooting client "PBCAK" (problem between chair and keyboard) issues 15%. Design is the last thing you get to do.
HAHA good list - I have had some of these. I try and get them to fill out a form telling me axactly what i will have to do and what they will have to do - not fool proof though :)
I think I will make this mandatory reading for all clients.