That may be a good idea: I will look into your suggestion and also what other options there may be. The previous website was one that was already up and running when I redesigned it, meaning no wonder the client was confused about the whole thing if it meant changing what she was used to. This is all new, so I have the opportunity to try and design it properly.
The story about the travel website made me wonder if a similar conversation had happened there! Or maybe they just didn’t know. It’s better than nothing. These days the designer/developer could have been anywhere in the world - I was trying to think of what exactly I would put in writing before beginning something and I guess there needs to be some way of indicating that ultimately it’s up to the client to check relevant local laws if there is any doubt. (???). I mean, I can try to comply with american / uk laws and best practices, but I wouldn’t even be able to read say, dutch or french laws. Probably nobody would even bother to check but I don’t want to be held responsible in the case of some problem.
Sometimes people really do get asked to do dubious things. I remember seeing an ad on a freelance site for someone to replicate a login page/members page exactly. I read it very carefully and came to the conclusion that it could only be for phishing. The website deals with very large purchases of thousands of dollars at a time. So I looked at the freelance site’s policy and it said it was up to you to decide the right thing to do. So I emailed the website and showed them the ad, and said it looked like someone was going to try phishing against their customers. They did write back and say thanks, too.
And no I don’t want to get my server blacklisted for sending spam. I already agreed with my next client (who was quite interested in all of this) that this means that anyone with forms really shouldn’t be hosted on my own server. I already decided that if they want to upload their own content that isn’t something I want on my server - just in case the whole thing gets taken down because of a picture they used. Not a biggie, I could still easily arrange hosting for them. But if I ended up with 30 small websites hosted on my server and they all went down because of one picture of a kitten someone swiped from google image search I’d have a lot of explaining to do! (I also decided to change some of my images - I only started blogging again recently, and didn’t even expect anyone to find my site. So I swiped the odd pic. Most of them are OK, but now I’m getting 100 visits per day and people are asking me for little 1-page websites that I can host myself it’s time to change all the dodgy ones. I don’t want someone else to be affected by my behaviour!).
The more I think about it, the more obvious it is that the real reason this all happened the way it did is just because this is a completely new person who has had no dealings with me before. The site is almost complete. To be honest I’m just as bothered by their remark that “of course we won’t be paying until we are completely happy with the website” when in fact this was a project with a fixed deadline, and I’m basically waiting for their content. Classic scenario! I always firmly impress on people when I am first approached about something that I never agree to do anything without a deadline. At the time I handled this comment by firmly redirecting their attention back to the fact that essentially there is not much more I can do without the content. It didn’t seem worth making more of a scene at the time, especially as it was our first phone call. But I really felt someone was playing the hotshot business person, probably thinking they are doing everything right (getting what they want, not paying until happy) but not realising they are creating waves. It crossed my mind to phone my original client and have a little chat. Anyway, I don’t think this is something I can’t handle - just normal people skills and assertiveness should be enough. I was caught out because when I took the project on I had been ill for a long while, and wasn’t quite up to speed with my usual methods of setting ground rules at the beginning.
I used to do paintings on commission. I’m used to setting the rules at the beginning: deadlines, payment, etc. I actually started asking for payment just to make the people who were already asking for paintings behave themselves and respect the time it takes! Cutting down on changes to the brief, making people turn up to view rough drafts, and all that. I said to my next client the other day that this suddenly made me realise perhaps there is a different scale of payment here - I should stick another 0 on the end basically! Just because what I’m charging is cheap for a website … yes that sounds utterly psychopathic but it’s a way of thinking about things that works (at least it did in the past). When I did paintings, these things would happen and the rules would be adjusted and the prices would go up. The more I charged the more people asked me to do, and the better they respected my efforts and my time.
I’m lucky to be dealing with such nice people so far. Yes I have actually avoided the real sharks. This is like practicing so when I maybe some day have to deal with someone really nasty, I won’t even need to think about what to do - I’ll just carry right on with my established procedure.
I have done that before with other things too - amazing how having some simple rules that you can tell people in advance cuts down on a lot of angst. If they break the rules they are “out”, and that’s that.