New Dot Commer

A while back we heard about New Dot Commer. New Dot Commer (NDC) is a buttondown, hardworking conservative guy with an inspired vision for a kinder, gentler, revenue-producing America. Enter Seersucker Suit Guy. This website developer sales guy fastened onto NDC. He totally persuaded New Dot Commer that the New Dot Com website should be developed and hosted on a Steroid server, using a humongous megamuscle search engine typically sold to sites with Deep Pockets. New Dot Commer soon found himself shelling out big bucks every month to Seersucker Suits Inc (SSI) for gee whiz development of a very modest website to be hosted by (of course) SSI.

One day when we were talking with NDC, we asked him why he was plunking down such Big Buck$ to SSI when the same website could be run for about 75% less on a Windows NT server. NDC swallowed hard and said "prove it." Long story short, we proved to NDC that his website could be run for 75% less on a Windows NT server. NDC checked his contract with SSI, and found the language he needed to stop financing Seersucker Suits' all-too-frequent visits to the ponies.

This did not please SSI one bit. SSI dug in its corporate heels, and the next time NDC asked for a full backup of his website, SSI grudgingly turned over a backup minus some rather critical code. Shortly before NDC concluded that SSI was on the verge of taking down his site, we concluded it would be easier just to collect what backups NDC had, abandon the site, and move to another service provider. Messy? You bet. Do we like to do business this way? No. But we did it. We don't like slimy seersucker suits.

It does get worse. This time SSI's victim was a real estate company run by a guy we'll call FancyThat Holmes. Holmes had met Seersucker at a family picnic. Two days later, FT Holmes had inked a megabucks agreement with SeerSucker Inc for website development. SSI had promised real gee whiz multi-media quality that would attract the higher end crowd that Holmes was eager to do business with. Everything went fine until one of FT's customers pointed out that FT, having paid megabucks for website development, really ought to have a backup of the Holmes website. The honeymoon between FTHolmes and SSI was over in a hurry when Holmes called Seersucker and asked for a full backup. It wasn't in the contract. The day that FT Holmes decided to change website developer, his website was no longer available to anyone, including Holmes. And there was not a thing Holmes could do about it. Full and confirmed backup had not been in the contract, and Seersucker was claiming all rights to all the code in Holmes' website. We bet the next time FT signs his name to a website deal, he gets full rights to all the developer's code. After all, he will have paid for it.

Folks, read your web site development contract carefully. Be sure you have full backups with all development code locked down. If you paid for it, it's yours – but only if it's in the contract.