blogarticle
he said she said
I was reminded of the phrase - he said, she said - yesterday, when we were contacted by a website design agency that had launched a new website that shares the same server one of our systems is on that is provided by a third party via our mutual client. The client had contacted us several weeks ago, letting us know that they were having a new website designed, so we sent them an email with the technical details and asked for this to be passed on and suggested the website agency should contact us in the first instance ....
The next time we heard from the client was when a small but important part of their system didn't work. We checked the server and found that the website design agency had launched the new website and used an "out of the box" WordPress set-up without checking the environment they were installing it on! We told the client to go back to the agency and get them to sort out the problem, even supplying the underlying reason for the issued identified in a vien attempt not to have to change the client for technical support that was created by a third party agency.
Some days later the agency contacted us asking how they fix it ... I resisted the opportunity to have a rant at them and ended up fixing the issues myself and not charging the client, as I thought that the only fair outcome. After all, the client was stuck in the middle of a "he said, she said" argument between two technical companies that I didn't want to make any worse than it already was.
Where had the agency gone wrong?
They had used a standard WordPress set-up that created an Apache configuration (.htaccess) file that set-up some redirection arguments and reset the permissions across the entire server. These are simple to avoid and indeed fix, but alas no acre was taken and the client put in a situation they should never have been placed in.
That's the end of my little rant and hopefully some website agencies will take more care in future, although I am not holding my breadth.
Date: 30/08/2017
he said she said
I was reminded of the phrase - he said, she said - yesterday, when we were contacted by a website design agency that had launched a new website that shares the same server one of our systems is on that is provided by a third party via our mutual client. The client had contacted us several weeks ago, letting us know that they were having a new website designed, so we sent them an email with the technical details and asked for this to be passed on and suggested the website agency should contact us in the first instance ....
The next time we heard from the client was when a small but important part of their system didn't work. We checked the server and found that the website design agency had launched the new website and used an "out of the box" WordPress set-up without checking the environment they were installing it on! We told the client to go back to the agency and get them to sort out the problem, even supplying the underlying reason for the issued identified in a vien attempt not to have to change the client for technical support that was created by a third party agency.
Some days later the agency contacted us asking how they fix it ... I resisted the opportunity to have a rant at them and ended up fixing the issues myself and not charging the client, as I thought that the only fair outcome. After all, the client was stuck in the middle of a "he said, she said" argument between two technical companies that I didn't want to make any worse than it already was.
Where had the agency gone wrong?
They had used a standard WordPress set-up that created an Apache configuration (.htaccess) file that set-up some redirection arguments and reset the permissions across the entire server. These are simple to avoid and indeed fix, but alas no acre was taken and the client put in a situation they should never have been placed in.
That's the end of my little rant and hopefully some website agencies will take more care in future, although I am not holding my breadth.
Date: 30/08/2017
he said she said
I was reminded of the phrase - he said, she said - yesterday, when we were contacted by a website design agency that had launched a new website that shares the same server one of our systems is on that is provided by a third party via our mutual client. The client had contacted us several weeks ago, letting us know that they were having a new website designed, so we sent them an email with the technical details and asked for this to be passed on and suggested the website agency should contact us in the first instance ....
The next time we heard from the client was when a small but important part of their system didn't work. We checked the server and found that the website design agency had launched the new website and used an "out of the box" WordPress set-up without checking the environment they were installing it on! We told the client to go back to the agency and get them to sort out the problem, even supplying the underlying reason for the issued identified in a vien attempt not to have to change the client for technical support that was created by a third party agency.
Some days later the agency contacted us asking how they fix it ... I resisted the opportunity to have a rant at them and ended up fixing the issues myself and not charging the client, as I thought that the only fair outcome. After all, the client was stuck in the middle of a "he said, she said" argument between two technical companies that I didn't want to make any worse than it already was.
Where had the agency gone wrong?
They had used a standard WordPress set-up that created an Apache configuration (.htaccess) file that set-up some redirection arguments and reset the permissions across the entire server. These are simple to avoid and indeed fix, but alas no acre was taken and the client put in a situation they should never have been placed in.
That's the end of my little rant and hopefully some website agencies will take more care in future, although I am not holding my breadth.
Date: 30/08/2017
he said she said
I was reminded of the phrase - he said, she said - yesterday, when we were contacted by a website design agency that had launched a new website that shares the same server one of our systems is on that is provided by a third party via our mutual client. The client had contacted us several weeks ago, letting us know that they were having a new website designed, so we sent them an email with the technical details and asked for this to be passed on and suggested the website agency should contact us in the first instance ....
The next time we heard from the client was when a small but important part of their system didn't work. We checked the server and found that the website design agency had launched the new website and used an "out of the box" WordPress set-up without checking the environment they were installing it on! We told the client to go back to the agency and get them to sort out the problem, even supplying the underlying reason for the issued identified in a vien attempt not to have to change the client for technical support that was created by a third party agency.
Some days later the agency contacted us asking how they fix it ... I resisted the opportunity to have a rant at them and ended up fixing the issues myself and not charging the client, as I thought that the only fair outcome. After all, the client was stuck in the middle of a "he said, she said" argument between two technical companies that I didn't want to make any worse than it already was.
Where had the agency gone wrong?
They had used a standard WordPress set-up that created an Apache configuration (.htaccess) file that set-up some redirection arguments and reset the permissions across the entire server. These are simple to avoid and indeed fix, but alas no acre was taken and the client put in a situation they should never have been placed in.
That's the end of my little rant and hopefully some website agencies will take more care in future, although I am not holding my breadth.
Date: 30/08/2017
