todd2222 12-07-2005, 07:29 PM About 3 months ago I hired a company to create a custom design for my vbulletin site. We agreed on a price and I agreed to pay half up front and the 2nd half on deliver.
Well a long story short I was handed off to an 18 year old kid who was very unprofessional and just didn't get the job down. After 2 months of back and forth I final sent an email to the original person and told him it wasn't working out and wanted my money back.
He said it was against his policy to refund, but he would take over the design and complete it.
Well it's been 4 weeks now and I still don't even have a draft. Now he has stopped responding to my email.
What can I do?
Thanks
Todd
ChrisLM2001 12-07-2005, 08:21 PM This happens a lot.
What happens is the kids don't know how to balance their work. They accept 5+ offers and they try to do it all by themselves (can't be done. vB is too complex to get a style done by oneself and quickly). By the time they can contract parts off to another to help, 3+ weeks could've past.
When asking a designer about doing a custom job, ask them if they do all of it themselves, and the REAL estimated time of completion. If they claim they're a sole designer and can produce original banner, elements, and other style changes and it can be done in a week, move on. Most kids are solely doing it themselves, so be very cautious. They often don't have the 15hr/day patience for a week to cram for a design. They'll work at it for a day or two, and put it on a shelf "for later". Later turns into weeks, and nothing gets done (as it's too time consuming -- XBox and iPod needs to be played with too).
Let me explain something else. What takes so long in making a *custom* forum is the layout work. A designer will have to take your suggestions, visualize a possible design, draw it out on paper, find stock images that'll match (or create them by hand), fix them (color/contrast/removing jaggies-backgrounds-unneeded pixels), then tinker with their graphics programs to add the images to some background (layer work). Take for example my avatar at left. The process of making it was simple, but it took over 12hrs to do (and I've been doing artwork for over 30 years -- my first commercial project was doing hand calligraphy for a sign @ 7 years old). It took that long because over 5hrs was used to experiment with the background and lighting effects to get the right blend. Most people think it's bam-bam-bam and it's done, but that's not true -- everything is done by hand and you have to FIGHT with graphics programs more so than doing it on paper/canvas. That's just a little 65x65 avatar. Think of the time that goes into a larger banner, ad, or even a Flash design. It's very, very, very time consuming and artists never get paid for all their time, like programmers. It's why designers use so many templates to speed up the process -- but no one really wants a template look!
Catch-22.
Best advice I can give to folks: if you want a full fledged custom designed forum, but don't want to get in this hassle of being ripped off, put up a request at www.rentacoder.com (where the money is held in escrow until both parties agree the work is done). Or do the forum in piecemeal......
First stage: get a banner/logo done.
Second stage: get the tcat/thead and CSS work done.
Third stage: get the buttons finished.
Fourth stage: get the ads and other final pieces done.
This way you get EXACTLY what you paid for, and you can be more picky on each individual element (where it's difficult to do that with a whole forum package deal). It takes longer, but you're not going lose $400, either. Worse of worse cases you'd be out of $100 (but you can trash that artist's rep all over the web. Bad rep, artist doesn't get work and he's out of the business).
Chris
todd2222 12-07-2005, 08:37 PM Thanks for your reply, you summed it up exacly how I felt. I didn't really care if his girlfried was coming home and he wouldn't have time to work on the design because he was going to be "busy".
I think my statement, "custom design for my vbulletin site", is a bit off.
Basically all I was originally asked for was a custom skin I think. Just a revamp of colors and graphics but not really any vbulletin template changes, or at least major chagnes.
What would something like this usually cost?
ChrisLM2001 12-07-2005, 08:57 PM Depends on the expertise. Rule of thumb in pricing is something like this: Apprentices can do work for free to a low fare and charge by a project (not by hour). Journeyman designers charge about 1/3 more (expect a rate of about $8 to $10/hr; or a design to be 1/3 pricer than an apprentice). The master designers will be hard to find as they're working commercially full time (illustration work; working in design houses), and their rates can be from $15+/hr, and a banner alone can cost $400+.
Any three can and will do pro bono work for building portfolios too.
If you just want the CSS colors changed and elements done, you can probably find someone to do it all for around $50 to $75, if not cheaper. I'd do it for free for portfolio work -- but I can't do anything right now until those darn parts come in and I can fix my dead computer. :( This one can't even keep a PSP open without page_fault errors.
Chris
theMusicMan 12-08-2005, 01:35 AM @Chris: Great explanations there Chris... good stuff.
@ Todd: you might like to take Chris' suggestions seriously and consider having a go at the initial stages yourself or with help from around here. What is your site url and what is the look/colour scheme you are after. It is relatively easy to tailor the default vB css and images to get a somewhat custom look and feel Take a look at www.rainbowsuneams.com which is as Chris says - simply a new header design, a few new buttons in the header, some css colour changes and a few gradients in the tcat and thead classes. See what can be done relatively easily...:)
Joeychgo 12-08-2005, 02:12 AM @ Todd: you might like to take Chris' suggestions seriously and consider having a go at the initial stages yourself or with help from around here. What is your site url and what is the look/colour scheme you are after. It is relatively easy to tailor the default vB css and images to get a somewhat custom look and feel Take a look at www.rainbowsuneams.com (http://www.rainbowsuneams.com) which is as Chris says - simply a new header design, a few new buttons in the header, some css colour changes and a few gradients in the tcat and thead classes. See what can be done relatively easily...:)
Um...
Might want to look at THIS (http://www.vbwebmaster.com/forums) site too...
todd2222 12-08-2005, 02:05 PM Thanks Guys!
Well, "my" site isn't really mine. It's my wife's.
http://www.dallasareamoms.com
She is the admin but I do all the "fun" stuff, vbulletin, database backups, etc.
I'm a technical person and I don't have any design ability. :( Never have and I know I never will. Nor does my wife, at least in this regard, as an aside she is an excellent photographer. So after trying to get something to look ok for a couple of weeks we just gave up and hired someone. Which has not worked out...and here I am. :)
Basically what she wants is a nice clean look with basic earth tones and maybe a little red here and there and a new banner, that I can do we have an image we want to use. We have tried to come up with a color scheme but just didn't get anything we liked.
I'll take a look at the Rent a Coder site.
Unless a miracle happens I just forget about the money I've lost.
Thanks!
ChrisLM2001 12-08-2005, 04:08 PM What is it about Texas and "earth tones"? lololol They must have more tan/brown/gold cars than anywhere in the USA too. ;)
Yeah, check out rentacoder.com, as that's the safest way to get a skin done and not lose money.
Chris
smacklan 12-08-2005, 06:16 PM You should pay me a visit...I have over 20 skins...all for under $20, plus a 2 for 1 deal, PLUS a discount for members here...heck you could practically get it free ;)
todd2222 12-10-2005, 08:29 AM Thanks! But like most skins I've found for vbulletin they are dark and/or "modern"...just not the look we are looking for.
Do you have any that maybe I didn't see?
You should pay me a visit...I have over 20 skins...all for under $20, plus a 2 for 1 deal, PLUS a discount for members here...heck you could practically get it free ;)
smacklan 12-10-2005, 10:34 AM Thanks! But like most skins I've found for vbulletin they are dark and/or "modern"...just not the look we are looking for.
Do you have any that maybe I didn't see?
I have two that aren't coded yet, one I don't think you'd like based on your description, another that perhaps you might...here is a screenshot:
clubracer 12-10-2005, 11:20 AM very nice skin!
todd2222 01-25-2006, 02:34 PM Ok we did a style ourself, except we had a friend's friend do the buttons.
So what do you thing?
http://www.dallasareamoms.com
If anyone knows how to get rid of the left column only on the front page I would love some help.
see: http://www.vbadvanced.com/forum/showthread.php?t=14151
Peggy 01-25-2006, 08:32 PM EXCELLENT! VERY nice job... love the colors, header, layout... oh yeah, you done good ;)
Todd, I wish I had a husband who would be helping me like this, I just have to learn it all myself, no support, so that's why I am hanging here.
julia44 07-03-2007, 03:56 AM Todd, I wish I had a husband who would be helping me like this, I just have to learn it all myself, no support, so that's why I am hanging here.
Funny I was just thinking that lol. All I get is help on how to word things and how are things going? LOL. I really really like the design you did.
todd2222 07-03-2007, 06:54 AM Todd, I wish I had a husband who would be helping me like this, I just have to learn it all myself, no support, so that's why I am hanging here.
We work as a team...I'll never forget the day our site was borned......Nicole had gotten kicked off of a Yahoo Group or something because she scheduled a playdate that was "baby friendly", she was tired of going to McDonald's and having our 6 month old baby crawling on the floor.. She was told that all playdates needed to be for every age child....not just babies.
I came home from work and saw that she was upset....I said let's start your own site and not some stupid Yahoo Group. 30 minutes later we had Dallas Area Moms up.....using some free ASP forum software (ASP and Microsoft SQL is what I knew) running on our home computer with a dynamic DNS setup. 6 months later we switched to vBulletin and have never looked back!
We now have our own server co-located at a data center and ads and subscriptions are paying all of our expenses. We don't really need our own server (well maybe we do) but I just love it, you know the geek factor. :)
todd2222 07-03-2007, 06:56 AM Todd, I wish I had a husband who would be helping me like this, I just have to learn it all myself, no support, so that's why I am hanging here.
BTW: I see you are in Dallas, if you have kids you should come join Dallas Area Moms (http://www.dallasareamoms.com), it's a great group of moms.
Peggy 07-03-2007, 07:28 AM We work as a team...I'll never forget the day our site was borned......Nicole had gotten kicked off of a Yahoo Group or something because she scheduled a playdate that was "baby friendly", she was tired of going to McDonald's and having our 6 month old baby crawling on the floor.. She was told that all playdates needed to be for every age child....not just babies.
I came home from work and saw that she was upset....I said let's start your own site and not some stupid Yahoo Group. 30 minutes later we had Dallas Area Moms up.....using some free ASP forum software (ASP and Microsoft SQL is what I knew) running on our home computer with a dynamic DNS setup. 6 months later we switched to vBulletin and have never looked back!
We now have our own server co-located at a data center and ads and subscriptions are paying all of our expenses. We don't really need our own server (well maybe we do) but I just love it, you know the geek factor. :)
Having your own server is great, never have to worry about room for expansion. You can make a bit more by hosting other sites on it.
If I knew what I was doing, I might do that, but naahhhh... I'll leave that to the geeks and stick to designing, lol
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