Web Designer is refusing to cooperate

[f22raptor]

He created a beautiful website using something he said is "parallax". Now its time to update the website and he seems to be uninterested. This fella does web designing in his spare time. He works for a bank. Other web designers have requested a "link" so they can access the website and start updating. He is failing to provide the link. When he was given the job he promised to provide a video showing the whole process of accessing the website. The website is hosted by Afrihost. Is there a way around this without having to visit him at his workplace ?

 

[Thor]

Do you own the hosting account?
In which case it's easy.

 

[f22raptor]

Yes we own the afrihost hosting account

 

[alphabyte]

If the account is in your name then you should have the access details.
If you do not have the details, or have misplaced them, ask Afrihost to provide them to you. Be sure to send an email from the same email address that is registered with them, and send it to [email protected], or try to ring them on 011 612-7200.
Drop me a PM if you need help - no obligation

 

[f22raptor]

I
If you do not have the details, or have misplaced them, ask Afrihost to provide them to you. Be sure to send an email from the same email address that is registered with them, and send it to [email protected], or try to ring them on 011 612-7200.

Thanks for your reply, how then do i phrase the question when asking Afrihost ?

 

[alphabyte]

"My website at 'xxxxx' is hosted with you, but unfortunately I have misplaced the FTP login details. I would be grateful if you could supply the information to me."

 

[SauRoNZA]

"My website at 'xxxxx' is hosted with you, but unfortunately I have misplaced the FTP login details. I would be grateful if you could supply the information to me."

And if another web "designer" couldn't even assist you this far...then you need to find someone better.

 

[John_Phoenix]

2 questions, as I've had legal matters with the reverse, where a client evaporated without paying.

1. Did you agree to pay him a set amount? And did you pay, that said amount.

2. Did you sign anything by way of a work order, spec doc or contract.

3. Do you have written (email/wa/text) confirmation that he concented to complete the tasks required to complete the website/ digital assets?

4. Did you agree upon a fee for updates, or did he in writing confirm that he will be responsible for said updates.

This reeks of a rookie dev, that was cheaper than your other quotes because he has no real skin in the game.

 

[Fulcrum29]

Parallax is likely just referring to a technique for scrolling - and he likely just used someone else's template and didn't code it himself. Did the original contract include him handing over the source? Sorry to say, this sounds like a poorly managed project as well as a knob of a developer.

Alternatively, it is also used to describe one page websites, obviously using Parrallax for cross-platform compatibility.

 

[John_Phoenix]

Alternatively, it is also used to describe one page websites, obviously using Parrallax for cross-platform compatibility.

Implementing parallax across devices and older browsers is a real pain, specifically safari, ie 9/10 and opera mini (forget about nice things).

If you care about performance and you want that content to hit them eyeballs in short order, plan your nice animations well in advance, and prepare to lose them all together.

The web is fun!

 

[Fulcrum29]

Implementing parallax across devices and older browsers is a real pain, specifically safari, ie 9/10 and opera mini (forget about nice things).

If you care about performance and you want that content to hit them eyeballs in short order, plan your nice animations well in advance, and prepare to lose them all together.

The web is fun!

Google and co. are pushing AMP for mobility in any case. Parallax is old now, many page builders available today for CMS making the job easier for web designers.

 

[f22raptor]

"My website at 'xxxxx' is hosted with you, but unfortunately I have misplaced the FTP login details. I would be grateful if you could supply the information to me."

Afrihost came through and provided the FTP login details expeditiously.

2 questions, as I've had legal matters with the reverse, where a client evaporated without paying.

1. Did you agree to pay him a set amount? And did you pay, that said amount.

2. Did you sign anything by way of a work order, spec doc or contract.

3. Do you have written (email/wa/text) confirmation that he concented to complete the tasks required to complete the website/ digital assets?

4. Did you agree upon a fee for updates, or did he in writing confirm that he will be responsible for said updates.

This reeks of a rookie dev, that was cheaper than your other quotes because he has no real skin in the game.

There was no contract signed just word of mouth agreement. He is an extremely busy person even after paying him it took several weeks for him to start working and more weeks to deliver the finished product. We agreed i would pay him to update the site but he has proven to be unable to do that or unwilling because getting hold of him has become very difficult and he does not call back. If he could not provide me with my own FTP login details then i have to find another person preferable a company with offices.

 

[Batista]

Afrihost came through and provided the FTP login details expeditiously.



There was no contract signed just word of mouth agreement. He is an extremely busy person even after paying him it took several weeks for him to start working and more weeks to deliver the finished product. We agreed i would pay him to update the site but he has proven to be unable to do that or unwilling because getting hold of him has become very difficult and he does not call back. If he could not provide me with my own FTP login details then i have to find another person preferable a company with offices.

I only get paid after i've provided the first draft.What is the nature of your site?You are welcomed to pm if you would like to discuss.

 

[alphabyte]

Glad you came right with the login info.
Drop me a PM and I can look at helping you with the updating.
And there will be no charge until you are satisfied.

 

[The_Librarian]

CONTRACT, CONTRACT, CONTRACT.

 

[John_Phoenix]

Afrihost came through and provided the FTP login details expeditiously.



There was no contract signed just word of mouth agreement. He is an extremely busy person even after paying him it took several weeks for him to start working and more weeks to deliver the finished product. We agreed i would pay him to update the site but he has proven to be unable to do that or unwilling because getting hold of him has become very difficult and he does not call back. If he could not provide me with my own FTP login details then i have to find another person preferable a company with offices.

Best to cut your losses, the onus was on him to provide a contract and sit with you to discuss a reasonable timeline. Failing those steps does no one any favours.

FWIW, the long time members of this site like cguy/ DROID/ Batista/ Jonathan56 and other (sorry if I left anyone out) know their stuff, and have been in the business of data/programming/websites for years.

Experience and professionalism costs more yes, but you always get what you paid for and more.

 

[Rickster]

You can get in the cPanel via the client zone, then you can add a FTP user.

 

[animal531]

Make sure to also change the login details asap, you don't want him to get back into your site and hold you hostage.

Ensure you also back it up so you can do a restore in case of trouble.

 

[rorz0r]

If/when you do engage with a company "with offices" then insist on them sharing access to a source code repository so you don't loose anything next time this happens. You might be lucky now that this is a "simple" site and FTP access will basically give someone else everything they need, but often these days with plenty of tech stacks that involve things like javascript and css generation/minification/bundling etc even having access to the uploaded site wouldn't give another dev everything they need to update the site.

 

[Johnatan56]

Make sure to also change the login details asap, you don't want him to get back into your site and hold you hostage.

Ensure you also back it up so you can do a restore in case of trouble.

Don't worry too much about that, you can go after him legally for that. That's why if you're a dev, you make sure you "keep" the code, as in you give a license to use until full payment, whereby it's "handed over". Of course depends on what you're doing.

Changing it might be good though, and moving away from Afrihost would be even better. Move it to e.g. Hetzner or domains.co.za, both have better uptime though are slightly more expensive.

As a side note, I hate parallax, I've had hours of work trying to get an implementation to work that depending on the speed of the PC, often breaking if users net is slow and they scroll quickly.
http://www.sbs.com.au/theboat/ now that is a good example of using it in terms of how the site is centered around it and it adds to it. Most sites have parallax when you really don't need it/doesn't add to the experience, but that's my opinion.

If/when you do engage with a company "with offices" then insist on them sharing access to a source code repository so you don't loose anything next time this happens. You might be lucky now that this is a "simple" site and FTP access will basically give someone else everything they need, but often these days with plenty of tech stacks that involve things like javascript and css generation/minification/bundling etc even having access to the uploaded site wouldn't give another dev everything they need to update the site.

+1, all my stuff is just the distribution stuff given, will be annoying for anyone to reverse engineer it in terms of time taken. Not saying it's impossible, but might be faster to start from scratch for small sites if you're trying to sort out all the minified stuff, and you should be minifying.