[thelist] backordering, domain transfer and other issues.

[VOLKAN ÖZÇELİK]

> > I'm curious. Did the developer and the site owner part on bad
> > terms?

Yes but this time it was, imho, the developer's fault. The current
site looks like a pile of garbage: both visually and the source code
behind:
- there is no style in text, (all times new roman, if you consider it
as a style)
- a layout with zillions of nested tables,
- hence extremely high body load,
- the layout distorts when resizing text (at least the text is
resizable -- that's a good thing anyway),
- the markup is full of MM_XXXyyzz (dreamweaver specific) scripts
written using in combination with a browser sniffing mechinism...
- There is no harmony, no color scheme; no saturation (full of vibrant
colors like #EE0000, #00CC00... which does not fit in the concept at
all),
- onclick event handlers all around and an extreme dependency on
javascript (well that's debatable as we are in the ajax era),
- extreme use of flash buttons (I don't say that flash is bad, but his
use of it was really really bad - It is apperant that he just dragged
and dropped the object into a table cell using dreamweaver),
- invalid markup (not the missing single quote or "your input is
placed in a missing container thing", the cell layout for the tables
was invalid; overlapping cell, wrong colspan rowspan value -- which is
also a consequence of extreme use of tables without knowing anything
at all about the internals and relying on the WYSIYWG stuff to
position them)

... I can extend the list further but I don't want to bore you.

If I were the client, I would not have paid a single penny for that design.

...

Anyway, thanks everyone for their input (including off the list replies).

I've contacted the client tonight and asked him that he should sort
things out with the developer, otherwise I'd do my best to re-take the
domain but underlined the fact that we cannot be 100% sure.

It was a long conversation, me explaining that he actually owns the
domain, if there is no contradictory term in his former agreement he
can dispute by legal means but it may take months (even years) to
conclude. I also offered instead of say abc.com we can take something
like theAbc.com which will not destroy the meaning as a worst case
scenario.

As per the payments, he does not seem to be a problem guy. I've
already invoiced and taken about one third of the estimate we agreed
upon without having written a single line of code. That was his offer
actually, not mine. He says, if I want to cancel the job before
starting it for any reason, it would be enough to send him the USD
equivalent of the initial capital (which is in local currency) back.
Not a bad deal, unless there is a develuation, economic crisis etc.

Cheers,
--
Volkan Ozcelik
+>Yep! I'm blogging! : http://www.volkanozcelik.com/volkanozcelik/blog/
+> My projects/studies/trials/errors : http://www.sarmal.com/