Cowboy web developers
One thing that really ticks me off more than most, are web developers who spout nonsense about being great at writing code and when you look, some of the work left behind for unsuspecting clients is a sorry mess.
But unfortunately the nature of the web allows these ‘cowboys’ to get away with it.
Lately I’ve been spending some time on various advertising sites and marketing my services to potential clients and through this I’ve come across other web developers and designers doing the same thing. Of course it’s natural for me to go and investigate these ads as I like to see what the competition are offering but it almost depresses me with that I find most of the time.
The problem with web development is that you can often achieve a design two ways. One way is a mangled mess with old standards and next to zero accessibility and the other way is to craft superb underlying code that will easily be future proof and nice to maintain. From what I’ve been seeing the former is far too common.
I see lists of promises such as “Accessibility is paramount! Get on page one of google!, We use the latest standards” and when I look deeper it’s not always the case. The part that irks me is the fact these sites get dumped on a poor, unsuspecting client and they go away happy and even recommend their services!
It would be unfair to tar everyone with this brush but when I see “15 page websites, from little as £300” then the alarm bells start ringing. I’m aware that sometimes my prices might scare people off but with the nature of most things, you get what you pay for and I know i’m more than reasonable.
A lot of people think you’re just paying for a freelancers time but it’s far from that. You pay for experience, promptness, reliability and much more.
I just hope that these cowboy web developers get clued up because they’ll help web development in general as well as themselves if they left the nineties behind.
Posted on Sunday, April 19th 2009 and there are 6 comments
6 Comments
I guess a lot of developers don’t really see it as the “web” but as a pure business. Not caring about standards but just getting a website out quickly and cashing it in.
Which works, but in many ways the client does suffer, sadly.
Posted by Merlijn on Monday, April 20th 2009
What annoys me is that they do it knowing fully well that the client isn’t going to know what a sloppy job they’ve done.
Something that has really annoyed me is my dad’s website (well, the company that he owns’ website). The people that designed it did a really shit job with the code, which naturally annoyed me since coding a website is my favourite part. Now that the website has temporarily gone down (damn recession), they’ve made it so the domain redirects to their own website. So anything like business cards, letter headings, etc, with the website printed on is giving their company free advertising.
It just seems really wrong!
Posted by Chrish on Wednesday, April 29th 2009
FYI
This is the website: http://www.10estates.co.uk
Go take a look at the source of that RMG website if you want a headache
Posted by Chrish on Wednesday, April 29th 2009
God, I feel your pain chrish, that is awful!
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