A few months ago, a client came to us because she was having trouble with her website.

The Problem

She loved the design, the look suited her and her business perfectly.  She just couldn’t update it.  It had been set up as a CMS so that she could, in theory, change it whenever she liked.  It’s just the CMS was so complicated, the site so awkwardly designed that she couldn’t make head nor tail of it.

At first we took a look at it to carry out the updates for her but when we started to dig a little deeper it was not good news.  Entirely Flash based it was far from accessible and not at all search engine friendly.  The limitations of the CMS had meant the designers had to fudge the content so that it looked good.

The Solution

So, we gave her two quotes – one to carry out the changes, one to completely re-engineer the site on a platform that would be far easier to maintain and far better at giving her the site she needed.

It would cost a little more at first but she could see the benefits, so we started to implement the design she liked in a far better tool – CMS Made Simple, to be precise.  In the meantime, her previous website designers, who were often hard to get hold of, usually impossible, popped up demanding money for hosting costs that had never been explained to her.

She took great pleasure in telling them her plans and exactly where they could get off.  She is now very happy with her site, Fill Your Face Cosmetics.

All’s well that ends well?

Time has passed and her site continues to grow, regularly updated with the content she needs and costing her less to maintain.  So much so, she has already saved the cost of us re-implementing the site.

But that’s not the end of the story.

Yesterday she was contacted by some friends who had also had their websites designed by the same people.  It turns out that the designers and their company have disappeared.  Their website is down, and so are all the websites of their clients.

So all the clients have to convince the hosts of this particularly strange system to re-instate their sites, then decide where to go from there.  We have a suggestion…

…but until then, what can we learn from this?

What should you know about your website?

If your designers are also your hosts, you need to ask them a few questions…

1) Is my domain name registered in my name?

2) Where is my website hosted?

3) Is my website backed up?

4) Can I make changes to the site myself?

5) What are my user names and passwords, including ftp access to the site?

A decent designer should have no problem sharing this information.  After all, they will want you stay with them not because you have to, but because you want to.

Wanting the answers to these questions doesn’t mean you are thinking of leaving, it just means you’re being careful – what if your designer gets hit by a bus tomorrow?

If you don’t like the answers they give, it’s time to start hunting for a new team to work for.  Just don’t hunt too far, eh?

Mrs Dear Geek’s business is fairly marvellous – a Kent website design company that specialise in helping small businesses get big websites from small budgets.

CMS – Content Management System – a way of building a website where the content (words and pictures) are kept separate from the design and software.  That way you can easily change the bits you need without having to understand things you shouldn’t have to worry about.

Flash – Adobe Flash – a system for delivering applications and multimedia like animations across the web.  Can create great looking sites that do nothing for your search rankings or accessibility.