Both my Mom and I love these easy-to-make pickles from Indonesia. For Mother’s Day, I put together a gift with homemade pickles in a custom labelled jar, the recipe to make them, and a seed packet for growing your own cucumbers. I removed the seeds from their original packet and redesigned the packaging – everything matches.
I used this recipe as a starting point – make your own sweet & sour fresh pickles!
Recently, we at the Pixel Foundry took on a project that showed us just how wrong some designers/developers can be about WordPress.
Let me explain. We were originally hired to make some small navigation, form plugin, and page order changes to an existing small WordPress-based site. It seemed a small job; one we could complete in less than a week.
Once I actually took a look at the site’s file structure, theme files, and so on, I couldn’t stop scratching my head. We ended up fixing the giant mess the previous “developer” (and I use the term sarcastically) had left behind.
1. Initially, our client’s website had two separate installations of WordPress running side-by-side, both connecting to the same database. One was in a subdirectory, meaning some of the site’s pages had urls like http://domain.com/subdirectory/page/ . This wasn’t intentional – my guess is the previous “developer” screwed up the installation process halfway through, started over in a subdirectory, and didn’t bother to fix it or the site’s permalinks.
What an insane file bloat. We deleted the duplicate files and moved the client’s WordPress installation to the main directory, where the client wanted it. Before we touched the site, it took up 125+ Mb on the web server – now it’s down to less than 60 MB in file size.
2. The original “developer” installed someone else’s premium theme and walked away. Our client apparently already had a site design before moving to WordPress, and requested it carry over to the new website. The “developer” told our client that wasn’t possible and WordPress was very inflexible to work with – it had to look this way. Our client reluctantly agreed but was heartbroken that the original, attractive site was replaced by the clunky new look – which we discovered wasn’t a “custom template” at all, but something downloaded and installed off a premium theme website. Our client was told a bare-face lie; WordPress can look like anything and its theme system is incredibly flexible.
It was the work of an hour to revise the css to use the client’s original site’s colour scheme and fonts – something the original “developer” either didn’t know how to do, or didn’t care to do. (We also offered to rebuild the WordPress theme from scratch to match the original, lovely site design – there’s no budget for this now, but maybe in the future.)
3. The site looked wrong in Internet Explorer. IE7 and 8 displayed the navigation incorrectly. I was stunned when I discovered this – wouldn’t someone spend the time to browser test a WordPress site they’re developing for a client?? Especially in the most common and (sadly) widely-used web browser. This was a css and theme issue which means either a) the original “developer” made some changes to the premium theme after installing it, and didn’t browser test or, more frightening, b) there’s premium WordPress themes out there for sale that don’t work in Internet Explorer. Fixing these theme display problems in IE took us less than an hour.
4. Some social media icons were introduced to the site, but they didn’t link to the right sites. Facebook’s icon went to LinkedIn. The Podcasts link went to nothing. It takes 5 minutes to test these things – 5 minutes the original “developer” probably spend browsing premium WordPress theme websites instead.
5. According to our client, they were never shown a staging area for final approval before the site went live. We also heard that the “developer” was rude when our client made requests for changes. The thought that a “developer” would go live with something the client hasn’t even seen is shocking to me. At Pixel Foundry, we always, always develop in a testing directory with password protection so the client can see changes before they have to commit to them.
How much did the original “developer” charge our client for this mess?? $2000+.
How much would we have charged?
To install WordPress correctly, custom-theme WordPress to match the existing site’s look and feel, import content into WordPress, configure an SEO plugin, and supply a guide on using WordPress to modify and move pages & write posts?: Starting at $1000.
I’m truly sorry our client had to go through this process with the original “developer”. They were lied to about WordPress’s functionality, ripped off on the final invoice, and the installation job itself was botched.
Clients, please do a bit of research on WordPress to get a realistic idea of what it can and can’t do – there’s a lot of unscrupulous “developers” and “designers” out there willing to work less than 3 hours installing a default template and charging you thousands of dollars. And, while I don’t mind fixing things up for you after the fact, I’d really rather be developing beautiful, flexible WordPress websites from the ground up.
