Am I at fault here? Or am I missing something?
 

Ok first things first, I'm not going to mention any names, because he's a pretty nice guy, just seems a little confused.

It's my hopes that he reads this post, and any advice others give him anonymously .

Here's the scoop,

Recently I was hired to do some gallery templates for a newly released solo girl site.

The guy wants the thumbnails hardcoded into the design itself, with a rounded edge. I though this was a little odd, but though eh, what the hell, I'll do it.

So I make his galleries, and then get a nasty email from him complaining that the galleries I made don't track his affiliates to the tour pages.

So my reply, naturally, was to get with his coder, or whomever he hired to make his affiliate section, and get him to do it. As a designer, I don't feel I'm responsible for creating his whole gallery, including the php code to pass on the affiliate codes to the tour.

Especially when I was not told to, nor given and snipplets of code to add.

I advised him that more then likely (though I wasn't sure) he was going to have to convert the html files I gave him to php files and add a code in there to pass on the affiliate id to the tour so the affiliates could get credited via a cookie or something similar.

Then I took a look at his tour, which is also HTML. So that means that once it's there, it's not even possible to track conversions? Am I correct?

Am I in the wrong? Or is this guy just asking too much from a designer? Do you have your designers code the entire thing for you?

Do you have any advice to give this new webmaster that I already haven't given him?

if his tour isnt in php, then how is it going to track anything... it wont...

Always tell them up front what you plan to do, but ive never had a client expect gallery templates track affiliates etc...

that type of coding is usually handled (in house) by client AFTER galleries are delivered... unless you provide that type of service which from this post doesnt sound like you do.

always be up front and lay it out is my best advice.

ive done templates for years this way...

I guess the main problem I had with this guy was that he was new, and trying to rush everything. But I kept trying to explain to him that they are only templates. A coder still has to go through it and make it work with the system he has in place.

I mean, he order's galleries, and then 2 days later asks what a TGP site is :error.

It's just a major headache to have to deal with. Not so much that he's new, moreso that he doesn't understand what you're trying to tell him, and then yells at you when it doesn't work.

I've been designing for almost 3 years and I have had my share of know-it-all noobs, but I mean come on...do some research first, get to know the industry you're jumping into before you jump.

CCbill cookie?

i might be mistaken, but doesnt the page have to be php to pass that along from the gal to the index?

i think so..

thats what I thought too.

I just got an email from him, he got his coder to handle the gallery templates to they track now, doing exactly what I told him he needed to do, I just sent him another email letting him know about his tour.

It's a shame, he's got a smokin hot girl for a solo site, but he's trying to rush everything.

Rich, if you read this, please man slow down and make sure you do it right, that site has some mega fucking potential, but you're going to crash and burn if you rush.

gal=php
tour can be html with ccbill tracking

damm yall got shit twisted, wht a mess

Galleries don't have to be php if they're using ccbill.. but only the newbs do it that way.. i.e. you use the ccbill link to go to the gallery thus setting the cookie... the experienced programs use php galleries with the ccbill code right on the galleries.

Its easy for me. We don't do free hosted galleries. We do gallery zips. Never got that whole deal. So not only do we make the gallery but we should also host it, and THEN give the person 50% of the sale. Nah. Im glad to supply materials, and maybe do like picture of the day movie of the day that kind of thing, but letting someone use my gallery AND bandwidth and submit to who knows what kind of crap traffic. Nah. To me its, here is some promo content, here is your link code. Goto it. If thats the case Ill just pay a submitter to submit my galleries. But if its ccbill the cookie gets passed along as long either way.

You did a great job of not mentioning his name :)

Sometimes people have very, very incorrect ideas about what a design includes. I used to project manage for a design company, and one time we had a client order a full page ad. So, we built him a full page ad. He emailed back saying it "didn't take up the full page" and wanted an actual web page built with a contact form, thumbs inserted and descriptions for DVDs he was selling, a shopping cart function, and I don't even remember what else. Basically, he wanted a one page, fully functional website built and thought a "full page ad" covered anything you could possibly do on one page.

I meant his name on the board.

Hmmm sounds like feature creep. you know the guy, ask for one thing and then gets all bent when the object he didn't tell you about or wasn't in the bid isn't done by you for free. Been there done that. still sucks ass.


NosMo

Yeah it does suck. I'm not real worried about it, we kind of worked things out.
At first he was asking for a refund, which even though I put in the time to do the work, I still would have given him.

But know he's seeing that I was actually trying to give him advice.

Still, fusturating nonetheless.

you are in the right, a gallery designer is not responsible for the coding

Assuming that he's using CCBill, the tour can be HTML, since the referrer information handled entirely by the cookie set by CCBill prior to the surfer even seeing the tour. Hosted galleries for free sites can be HTML as well, as long as the the paysite's .htaccess has been set to parse PHP on HTML pages. It's a very common practice.

Also, when I was building hosted free sites for sponsors, I almost always did the coding to carry the affiliate code. But that was all pre-arranged.

Pre-arranged being the key word there. I would have been happy to do it, had he told me he needed it done from the begining. I'm not a mind reader.

Absolutely. I've found that working for sponsors is a complete pain in the ass. Just getting them to simply give you the necessary content can be a hassle and a half. Link codes are one more thing that they can blame you for later, after they realize that THEY don't even know the proper link structure for their sites. Oy vey. Most designers are underpaid as it is, due to having to compete with 3rd world outsourcers. They really shouldn't have to deal with all of the extra nonsense. :2 cents:

I expect my designers to send the traffic to the galleries too. I mean, I DID spend $15, didn't I? ;)

:1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh what WAS I thinking?


Oh and $15??? Damn....