Thread

First off, sorry for the length of this post, I tend to be detailed in my descriptions and I believe it was necessary to illustrate the situation.

I recently hired a Expression Engine Consultant to design me a template for one of our sites.  We didn’t require them to make it EE friendly or integrate it into EE, I wanted to take the opportunity to learn EE so I can maintain the site and can make my own customizations as time goes on.

Part of the requirements was to make an index page, a sub template, and two landing page designs.  Which was successfully done, but as I started integrating it into EE and learning how things were designed, I ran into a lot of problems.  He worked with me for a little while on some of the issues, but the biggest issues were brushed aside as if they were not problems.

I consider these big problems, and I was quite frustrated with them.  I ended up resolving most of them myself and mitigating some of them, but I am finding myself re-writing a majority of the code for something I paid good money for.

1)  The templates (All of them) were sized at around 800KB, which is roughly 25+ seconds on a unused T1 connection.  For high speed, it isn’t so bad as it loads in 10 seconds or so.  But since our market is B2B, most of our clients will be on a T1 or fractional T1.  But it loaded fine on his T3 so he didn’t really see any problem, despite the fact a T3 is roughly 30 times faster than a T1.  The main reason for this problem was a combination of unoptimized images and more importantly EVERY image on the website (even the landing pages) were referenced in the CSS code.  So the 115K landing page image was loaded on EVERY page, the 350K of images on the home page were referenced on every page, and the 200K image on the 2nd landing page was referenced on every page.  I broke these out into separate CSS files and drastically reduced the size.  I also optimized a few of the key images.  In my opinion, 750KB home page (and every other page) is just too big and causes way to many problems with performance.  About 100K of this was 40K in CSS, and over 50K in JavaScript, all of which loaded on every page if you needed it or not.

2) Problem two was equally frustrating, we were looking for an effect similar to what is on http://www.expressionengine.com, in terms of a tab container that loads multiple images you can go through and see different messages and click through to the page.  This was done with CSS and behind images.  The problem was all three text blocks would load simultaneously and create cryptic text (since there was three layers of text overlayed) for 5-8 seconds while the page loaded, the three images would be loaded vertically on top of each other (thus spanning 2.5 pages) and then “snap” into place where it looked good.  But the loading effect was 5+ seconds of giberish garbage till the site fully loaded.  This was cut down considerably with my adjustments and optimization, and on a “T3” it looks fine.  But everyone of the 20 or so people I had preview the site said it happened and most of them found it very annoying.  I find it utterly unacceptable.  I have the effect down to very short period of time, but I am probably still going to replace it with something better, ExpressionEngine.com does an EXCELLENT job with the effect and was exactly what I was going for.

3) Another thing that I was very unhappy about was that our “design” was displayed on his website without our permission, I understand this is a grey area but I believe it is pretty well accepted that you need to ask for permission to display work in your portfolio especially when it displays your brand.  Some may disagree but this is a something I think is very rude.  I asked him (early on when I was happy with the mockups, before digging into the code) I was very happy with the design but it is our policy to not display our work in designers portfolios.  I didn’t receive a response to this, but I noticed our work was re-dated to an earlier date, so it didn’t show up in the portfolio unless you searched for it or scrolled back a couple pages.  Now I was really annoyed, but hey nice try, but not very professional.  The second time I asked, he responded and kindly took it down.

I ran into a lot of other problems most of which I have corrected or replaced with new content to solve, but all and all I can’t say was a pleasant experience.

Am I off my rocker or should I expect more for $70/hr designer?

Hi Saxi,

While you are welcome to vent about a bad experience, please do not go into the specifics between you and the developer. Specifically do not name or link to the developer in these forums. For legal reasons we have to make sure that any dispute between client and developer is handled privately.

That aside, its difficult to respond to your post in a meaningful fashion. Obviously you had a bad experience but to sum it as “expect more for $70/hr” never really tells the complete story between a client and a developer. Your post is basically a setup where its impossible to do anything but agree with what you said and while I empathize with you there isn’t much constructive to add aside from its good to clarify expectations in written form up front.

If I were to venture a guess I’d say what you expected and what the developer expected were different in key areas which resulted in a communication breakdown late in the project after it was too late for either party to gracefully back out.

Hi Saxi,

While you are welcome to vent about a bad experience, please do not go into the specifics between you and the developer. Specifically do not name or link to the developer in these forums. For legal reasons we have to make sure that any dispute between client and developer is handled privately.

That aside, its difficult to respond to your post in a meaningful fashion. Obviously you had a bad experience but to sum it as “expect more for $70/hr” never really tells the complete story between a client and a developer. Your post is basically a setup where its impossible to do anything but agree with what you said and while I empathize with you there isn’t much constructive to add aside from its good to clarify expectations in written form up front.

If I were to venture a guess I’d say what you expected and what the developer expected were different in key areas which resulted in a communication breakdown late in the project after it was too late for either party to gracefully back out.

I purposely left out the name of the developer, as I don’t think it is professional to mention another company in this medium like that.

What ourselves and the designer had in mind was quite on track, but these are not things that a client may or may not want, at least in my opinion I believe these items are things that any professional with that much experience would be obvious to.

What I wanted to figure out, if someone else would be content with nearly 1MB web pages, that carry 600K of stuff from other pages along with every other page.  Or if they feel the same way about a consulting posting the work you hire them for on their website and then trying to cleverly hide it after you ask them to take it down.

The consultant is completely anonymous, but I he knows who he is and is free to comment if he chose to.

When I referred to $70/hr developer, I wanted to clarify this was not someone we hired for $5 a week and that it was someone with an established business and a professional in the field, as well as a pro on EE’s network.

Ah, got it.

1MB seems very large for a single page foot print. And come to think of it, I don’t actually know what the legal stance is regarding showing work in a portfolio. Back when I did web development work I always had that as a clause in the initial contract and the client was free to opt-in or out. But it would seem common courtesy would be to not list unless given permission to do. The larger clients I had typically had their own air-tight contract clauses about how I could and could not promote the work I did for them and if I wanted to get paid I had to agree to those before a contract was ever signed.

Ah, got it.

1MB seems very large for a single page foot print. And come to think of it, I don’t actually know what the legal stance is regarding showing work in a portfolio. Back when I did web development work I always had that as a clause in the initial contract and the client was free to opt-in or out. But it would seem common courtesy would be to not list unless given permission to do. The larger clients I had typically had their own air-tight contract clauses about how I could and could not promote the work I did for them and if I wanted to get paid I had to agree to those before a contract was ever signed.

I am not 100% sure on the legal status of it either.  But I know if I worked for say Coke or Microsoft, and I posted that on portfolio without their permission I would expect to receive a letter from their attorneys.  In my experience, it is always something you have to ask for.  But really bothered me was the fact he tried to hide it after I asked him the first time.  That is what I believe made it stand out as a bad experience.

An 800k template is way way too much IMHO, and 200k+ images in a template isn’t going to be very friendly if you’re using dialup! Add to that the templates don’t include any content which just adds to the total.

It does sound as if the template designer is more of a “graphics” designer rather than a “web” designer which is probably why the file sizes are so excessive. Personally if I know a sites demographics are going to have a high proportion of dialup users (and there are still many) I try to keep templats down to around 100k, if the vast majority are on broadband (such as corporates…) then I will stretch to 200-300k tops including css and scripts.

Did you specify in the contract that you needed the templates to be optimised for the best performance? Probably not and few people ever do, though it’s a valubale learning point for anyone hiring a 3rd party web designer - not everyone is on broadband and huge file sizes increase bandwidth usage as well as longer loading times for most.

As for the designer displaying the design on their site, that’s pretty standard practice for most designers and I do it as do many others. A simple email from a client and I’ll remove it, it’s not a great problem (for me at least!).

Wow, those page sizes are totally unacceptable. To me it says the designer doesn’t know how to develop for the web. Maybe a great layout artist but not a web developer. Image optimization is sooooo basic. Of course, I haven’t actually seen the site in question, but I can’t imagine images that size. On a very large eCommerce site we had a max home page size of 150kb (included html, images, javascript) and it was an image heavy page. Amazon at that time averaged 110kb). Of course that was when the majority had dialup.

As far as showing the work in the portfolio, I always do (especially if it is a public facing site) unless the client has a very specific reason not to or there is a specific contract clause. I honor a good reason (private site, etc), decline the second. Don’t know if it’s still true but my lawyer told me years ago that I had the right to show my work, it’s about the only thing a designer has to attract/sell new clients. The portfolio is ones lifeblood. Of course, if the client isn’t happy, you probably don’t want it in your portfolio to begin with. 😊

Edit-Add: But of course, there are always two sides to every story.

They are very much a web design rather than a graphic place.  Their own website is almost 1MB as well, but since he works on a T3 he doesn’t see much of a need to have it any smaller.  But the artifacts with the loading was a big problem for me, every person we had looked at it complained about it.  We were basically told it looks fine and to deal with it.  He did create HTML index page and sub pages and is definitely not a “graphics only” person.

I didn’t specifically give a limit to the size of the site, but I did mention in my requirements that it would be clean, manageable, I did mention in our phone conversation that I wanted it fast and efficient. 

I think carrying over 400K+ of images on a page that those images are not even used is just sloppy.

Hhmm! I come from the other end of the spectrum, all client work is available for us to display in our portfolio (via screenshots or production stills), unless the client explicitly denies consent—typically this means they have their own contract they want us to sign rather than using our contract.  But we work with mostly nonprofit, educational, and government organizations, as oppose to corporations; and I know lots of corporations don’t like their stuff to end up in portfolios. Like Leslie, our standard contract includes information stating that the client may end up in our portfolio, though they can opt out. We’ve only had one client opt-out that I can think of. In fact, even in the cases where our contract ends up as a rider attached to their contract, the client has typically allowed us to use at least a single screenshot of the front page, if not more.

As for the site optimization stuff, that’s hard to say. Web designers, developers, and general web consultants tend to have a vast array of expertise. I’ve notice that a lot of designers with a strong focus on front end design, don’t concentrate so much on backend issues or don’t have a lot of experience in issues like site optimization or SEO, etc. Some developers who can make you weep with the beauty of their backend development, site optimization, and streamlined, commented code can created clean highly functional and useful sites, but will most likely never be featured in any outlet that focuses in on design beauty or creativity. That doesn’t make either school worth less, so if their fees are $50, $75, or even $100/hr you get access to the skill set that they excel at, but possibly not a well-rounded set of skills.

I’ve been noticing more and more some really top-notch designers teaming up with some top-notch developers on projects, which I think is great. But client wise, I think often a client goes with a great designer thinking that site optimization is standard—and while I won’t argue whether it should be or not—the fact is site optimization is an additional skill, just like search engine optimization and there’s no guarantee that your contract has that skill unless you’ve requested it.  It’s a bit like expecting a developer/designer to have PHP or Javascript skills. Yeah there are lots of individuals out there that do have them, but there are probably just as many developers/designers who don’t.  The web is a mish-mash of skills.

... The web is a mish-mash of skills.

EXACTLY!
Which is why it’s a good idea for when a client is shopping for a designer/developer, to ask: If a designer/developer does NOT have a particular skillset required/requested by a client, it’s always a good idea for them to ensure the task can be sub-contracted.

Their own website is almost 1MB as well, but since he works on a T3 he doesn’t see much of a need to have it any smaller.

In my humble opinion that just shows ignorance of the real world, real users and operating costs. 1mb pages may be fine for a T3 but the vast majority of users don’t have that luxury!

ok all. We’ve established that 1mb pages are bad, some business lessons have been learned. Its time to move onto something more positive and constructive.

Thread closed.