₦airaland Forum

mreds:

Sorry for not seeing your post earlier. I do tutor though not in Nigeria currently (I assume thatz where you are. Regardless, if you aren't in my locale, I can't do it as I prefer it be one-on-one).

I am working on a seminar in naija and will keep you and others posted.

sorry about that.

I personally don't think the layout of the site is bad, not that it couldn't be any better.

poster:
Everything boils down to if you have a contract with the "webmaster" or not. If you do, sue his pants off. I will help with providing reasons why your site isn't ranked highly. If you don't, I am afraid, you may just have to pay, though I would seek legal advice as Afam has suggested, to see if you could, worse case, get off with paying a fraction of the 3m. Sorry this is happening to you.

Just this past Sunday, I was talking with a potential client who is going through basically the same thing, though on a different scale:

I stay in the US and was at a friend's house when someone came in, was told I am a web person and asked me how to increase his rankings on google. After I told him, he was like, "if you enter my company name on google, I come up but I only get calls from people who get my company info from radio adverts". That raised a red flag and so I asked to see his website.

On getting there, I viewed source, only to discover that there were no keywords or description on the pages. I told him what the problem was and how I would go about improving it. I even showed him the google analytics of clients whose sites I have developed and showed him over time how hits to their sites increased, one by up to 300%. The guy was dumbfounded. He said, "wow! I didn't know all this and the guy I paid said he did everything to ensure that my site ranks high". I told him, "apparently, as I have proven to you, he hasn't". We then proceeded to discuss pricing but trust naija, he wanted to negotiate the price down (that is a story for another day).

My point:
37ports, I think you have been conned, on account of ignorance, no offense. You aren't aware of what needs to be done in such matters and the "webmaster" probably sensed this and didn't give you what you paid for.

If I may ask, when you were given the presentation, did you ask questions along the lines of, "how does this work? when will I start seeing results? what other clients have you done this for? may I contact them and ask how their sites are doing? etc" Google/yahoo advertising, aka adwords in Google, is no joke. You actually have to set up a daily budget and you are charged each time someone clicks your link on the search results page then, once your budget is exhausted, your paid link no longer shows up. For them to ask for money for this upfront raises a red flag for me cos I would need to know how much of the money you are paying is going towards the ads and as a matter of fact, those I have done it for, I set it up such that they pay directly.

There are other ways to ensure that your site ranks high and should you want, my company can work with yours to make sure this happens.

Conclusion:
Again, though the site could use some improvements, it shouldn't stop the site from ranking high if the "webmaster" did all they legally could (which of course they didn't) to get your site to rank high. If you had paid 10K as seems to be custom these days, I would have said you get what you pay for. Since you have paid in the millions, I will say seek all legal redress possible to bring the person to justice. I can help provide reasons why you were conned as well. In the meantime, go over your contract again and get a lawyer.

Good luck!

flaw or no flaw, I am easily turned off by stuff like that and will not return to that site till next year. If by that time, it is still pay-to-read, I will not go back for another year, etc. I too noticed the new "strategy" I would say at least 3 months ago and haven't visited since.

Such a pity, punch used to be the most visited Nigerian website in the world, with NL coming in 2nd. Now, NL reigns supreme.

Whoever is in charge of their website division should realize that the way of the web is to offer basic needs for free then charge for extras. Oh well, knowing how some people in Nigeria are, they will probably bark back, "do u know who i am? I have been designing websites since 1973. Since you are yelling like this, can I see your works?"

God help us all!

omni:

start a new thread for this so that we can keep this open on the issue at hand.

I will definitely chip in a kobo or 2.

gdi:

Total brand experience is very short and concise but I am wondering if the average lay person would know what that means. Maybe you expatiate a bit, especially the "brand" part.

good luck!

nice advert veetubes

This site wouldn't even make it on my "worst websites of 2009". Maybe "worst of the worst" but not "worst"

rufaai,

I think a USP should be simple,short and sharp. Imagine yourself in an elevator with a millionaire. You are on the 1st floor and he is getting off at the 2nd while you are getting off at the 3rd. How would you explain what makes you unique in 5 seconds or less? That, my friend, is how concise a USP should be.

Good luck!

As in is it possible or if you can do it yourself or you want someone to do it for you?

Be more specific.

yeah tech pros, 3 pages is pretty amazing. yet again, considering how dry the board has been lately, don't you find it even a little refreshing?

I only feel for quadrillio based on the comment he made about what becomes of someone's projects if he leaves a company and wondered if it then means the person will have to start from zero number of projects.

Typically, from my experience, whatever you do while employed by someone else, is the intellectual property of the employer and such is specified in the contract signed by both parties. In other words, whatever you do for your employer, though you wrote it, belongs to the employer. This is why, at least for me, I maintain a back up of all code I think I may need in the future, on my computer at home. I would hate to be told by another employer to do the same thing and then I spend the time to do it again. Am I violating my employer's contract? I guess but to me, this is a grey area. I did the work and see no reason why I should do the same work twice. Having said that though, I won't go around bragging that I spent 1 hour doing what would have taken me 3 days because I had the code at home; neither do I go around telling people at work that I maintain a library of code based on work projects, at home.

Yes, it can be quite discouraging, especially when you spend time doing something novel, for you not to own it. I know how it feels. I have been there.

I haven't used FP in ages (since FP2000 to be precise) but recall a thing or 2 about it. Others please chime in.

1) There should be a menu item called "upload to server" or whatever. Just hover over each button until you find it.
2) Clicking this should prompt you for server information (ftp address, username and password).
3) If you enter the right information, file transfer will begin.
4) There should be an option to save #2 above so you don't enter it again when next you upload.

One thing to note though is that you have to ensure that your webhost supports FP extensions, otherwise, no matter how many times you upload, your site won't come up.

bigjoe:
speaking for myself, it wouldn't have made a difference. Herein lies my comments above that you avoid making blanket statements. I guess I should have gone into law I have never had a conversation with quad, be it YIM, email or otherwise, other than official correspondence on this board.

king:

You never bothered to check it out to prove by calling or mailing OR EVEN checking out the "whois".

The burden of proof is on you, the plaintiff. I can't go by what you are saying, or what wale is saying for that matter, until I get more concrete proof. I will expatiate, or attempt to, by recalling a post on NL a few months ago:

Some girl in the US was doing some deal with a guy in finland which went sour. The result was that the guy posted photos of the girl, etc. Of course the girl retorted claiming it wasn't true. Naturally, people took sides and it didn't get resolved until the girl posted receipts to show that she took care of her end of the deal. Both parties actually got lawyers involved and those lawyers contacted Seun, if I am not mistaken.

A website can be changed at any time. Besides, again, you are the plaintiff so you come up with the proof. It might seem like we are jobless, posting every 5 minutes but speaking for myself, I am very busy. I use NL to cure either boredom or headache when I can't figure out a programmatic problem. If you thought the whois would be useful, do your own homework and post it here for us to see.

You and you only know ALL the facts to give Wale a guilty verdict so the burden of proof is on you, not us.

woohoo!

page 1 of 2. Click "next" to read it all:

Last month, Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer posted its largest market share loss since November 2008, while Firefox reaped nearly all the benefit, Web metrics company Net Applications said today.

Meanwhile, Google Inc.'s Chrome continued to gain on Apple Inc.'s Safari, closing to within 1.25 percentage points. At Chrome's current pace, it will replace Safari as the No. 3 browser in 11 months.

But it was the biggest browser by share, Internet Explorer (IE), that saw its numbers change the most in August, when it dropped 1.1 percentage points to 66.6%. The slide was IE's steepest since last November, said Net Applications, when Microsoft's browser plunged by 2 percentage points.

In the last 12 months, IE has lost 8.6 points of browser share.

Mozilla's Firefox has collected about half that over the same period, but last month the open-source browser surged by 0.8 percentage point to 23.3%, nearly matching its record of 23.8% set in April.

Apple's Safari increased its market share only slightly, to 4.1%, while Chrome climbed by 0.3 percentage point to 2.9%. Opera Software's Opera accounted for 2.1%, growing by 0.1 percentage point, the Norwegian browser's largest single-month gain since October 2008.

Browser market share may soon be less of an academic counting exercise or simply for bragging rights. Microsoft has proposed to include a browser "ballot screen" in Windows 7 in less than two months, and later in Windows XP and Vista, that will let European users choose which application they use to access the Internet. Initially, the top five browsers are to be on the ballot, with market share determining position from left to right. Microsoft has told European antitrust regulators that it would use one or more Web metrics vendors -- Net Applications is among the most prominent -- to determine those it puts on the ballet.

Within the still-dominant IE share, trends established earlier continued in August. The eight-year-old IE6 lost 2.4 percentage points, dropping to 24.8%, while 2007's IE7 lost 1.9 points, falling to 21.2%. IE8, on the other hand, gained 2.7 percentage points to post an August average of 15.2%, its largest share ever by a wide margin. As recently as April, IE8 accounted for only 3.6% of all browsers.

IE6's August plunge was the biggest since December 2007, when IE7 was only months old and supplanting its predecessor in large numbers. IE6's long life -- some have said it's been far too long -- has prompted some major Web sites, including Facebook and YouTube, to urge their users to ditch the aged application. Even Microsoft has given its tacit approval, at least when consumers are concerned. "Friends don't let friends use IE6," said Amy Bazdukas, Microsoft's general manager for IE, in an interview two week ago.

Is the increase from mobile phones a result of the popularity of your site or because of this pos?

Seriously though, in a country where some cafes are either too slow, non-operational due to high fuel costs and in many cases not easily accessible, it makes sense that the thing you carry around with you 24/7/365, your cell phone/pda, is what you would use to do business. This should be a lesson to developers in general that they should develop their sites with mobile usability in mind. This will help prevent "double-coding" which sucks from a maintenance point of view.

good job on your app and good luck to you!

smartsoft:
As I said, definitions differ from place to place. Also, it is up to you to have a USP and not for your clients to define it for you. They don't know you more than you know yourself. A USP is what you use to win a deal, not a recommendation you get after a deal.

quad:
I stand corrected, but I think this isn't a good USP - you can't learn it all. You do what you can and pick up as you go along. Even if you could learn it all, you couldn't master them all.

I think you should revise perhaps to, "I will do whatever it takes to make sure that you are totally satisfied" and let the client define that for themselves. I think the way I have it (I stand corrected) speaks volumes in and of itself.

king:

speaking for myself, these links don't belong here. You can do this privately. Sure, the number of sites are impressive (and I stress number, nothing else) but there is no need doing this here. You know his email address (and maybe his YIM) and should do this privately.

It should be taken offline, IMHO.

biggjoe:
I agree with you that they are far from resolving this but I will take exception, if you don't mind, to this statement you made above (focus on bolded portion):

It is true that Kinguche did not follow up her claims with enough facts to prove that she owns aratext but simply because we are more at home with quadrillio, many posters turned the heat on her, even though she made some general statement. Nobody will like that.

I would rather you speak for yourself and for those you are absolutely sure speak this way.  I am not one of them.  Again, I am for equal justice for all.

quad:
I think at the end of the day, you will be the one who won't let sleeping dogs lie.

You said (focus on the bolded portion):

Thanks everyone,
                           I'll ve love to kip a sealed lips on dis issue but since it's making me look like a fool and a lier then I ve to clear out some part, I work for d company for a period of time but I've left, so they ask me not to post website, done under them as my portfolio so I decided to remove dem.

Based on that, why would you ask (again focus on bolded portion):

as much as I respect your post, I'll like to emphasis the text in bold.

is it a crime to list a site develop while u were working for a firm?

does dat mean u are back to zero when u leave?

jus curious.

SAFE

(bolded) exhibit A implies that at least for kinguche, you were not to post any website you worked on while under her employ.  It is perfectly normal and within her rights for her to tell you to do that, especially if you signed an agreement form (usually called, "protection of intellectual property rights" agreement, or something to that effect).

I haven't eaten anything all day today so perhaps I am seeing double and consequently am wrong with respect to what I am reading.  If I am, I apologize.  If I am not, then I suggest we stick to your original suggestion, which is to let sleeping dogs lie, so as to avoid what you are doing now, IMHO: Digging yourself deeper into a hole you may not be able to rescue yourself from.

quadrillo, thanks for stepping up to the plate. As I have stated numerous times on this thread, I am not for or against you, but for equality in justice.

As you said, the issue has been resolved and I want to believe that it has been resolved. It would be nice for King Uche to step and say same so as to bring this to a positive conclusion. Besides, based on what she said, we stand to gain from her vast experience and tools. We need to tap on the brains of the experienced ones amongst us so that in the end, we all learn something.

Let this be a lesson to you and to all out there - follow the rules of engagement in whatever you do.

badesemowo,

I believe you have already found it, but just in case:
https://www.nairaland.com/nigeria/topic-310426.0.html

badesemowo,

thy.com is pretty neat. Good job!

I am actually not in the country and don't intend to visit this year so unfortunately, I won't be able to participate, sorry. Having said that, I wish you well and wouldn't mind a website where I could visit to keep myself abreast of the day's events. I guess dhtml will be able to attend

I wouldn't say I know Joomla! a lot. I do what I can when I can and let my work/the client do the talking. I have actually only done 1 site with Joomla! though I first read up on it about 3 years ago and found it to be quite interesting.

king uche,

Again, thanks for the ad hominem attacks.  I don't deal in those.  Also, this isn't a thread for "do you know who I am or what I do (based on what you have shown, I your bark doesn't match your bite.  I could debate you on a thing or 2 regarding your approach to web dev, but again, this isn't what this thread is about)".  If you want, as I said earlier, launch such a thread and I just might contribute.  To me, it isn't about the calibre of clients I work for but how much money I make per client.  In other words, I would rather develop a site for a groundnut seller for 500K than for say, the NBA for 100K (not to say that is what you charged).

You seem to not understand where I am coming from - a legal stand point.  Coding a law site has nothing to do with knowing the law.  That's like saying that because I have done 2 sites for local politicians, that I know the ins and outs of local politics.  Wale as you have said has wronged you.  If it is indeed a fact, tis a pity it has happened.  All I am saying is that you need to provide more than what you posted earlier to state your case.  For instance, i would expect a good lawyer to immediately point out that though you are a woman, you have chosen to include 'king" as your username.  In other words, if you could deceive (and yes, it is a form of deceit) us by claiming something you are not, then why couldn't you as well accuse someone of something he is not? It doesn't mean you are guilty or that Wale is innocent but that you have dug a hole for yourself from a legal standpoint, a hole from which wale could legally (not morally or ethically) escape.

Let me expatiate my point of view (hopefully) better with an actual story:

There was a guy called John Adams, an American colonist born during the revolutionary era.  He was a lawyer.  At some point in his life, there was, in his neighborhood, an event called the boston massacre - british soldiers killed some colonists (I won't go into details to make the story short).  Adams was so principled and believed in equal justice for all that he defended those soldiers, contrary to public opinion.  In the end he won the case and won the soldiers their freedom.  As a result, he lost clients and made quite a few enemies as you might imagine.  Despite all this, he ended up being the first VP of the US and the 2nd President.

My point? I don't do or say things to make people happy.  I call a spade a spade and damn the consequences.  A forum like NL is full of faceless people.  Anyone can post anything.  Again, if you are wronged,have your lawyers contact Seun and post the details here.  I would even go as far as posting a scanned copy of an affidavit.  You don't just come in here, say what you want to say and expect us to believe you 100%.

Yeah noticed that too. My issue with kinguche though isn't that wale is lying but his attitude. The art of communication is a skill very few have mastered.

He says he provided photos. I didn't see any. Also, merely typing stuff doesn't constitute proof, I personally can't and won't judge based on text. This needs to be settle face to face, in a court of law. Once the proceeds have been made public, they aer then presented here and thread is removed. either that or a lawyer writes Seun who then also has a chance to respond.

You don't just tell someone to do something without sufficient proof.

as a vindication, let the court of nairaland note that kinguche has lost all credibility by doing exactly what he said he wouldn't do - "go now".

Is this guy worthy of the respect he is expecting? I will let you all be the judge

I have spent hours on this and i have go now.

Come on man, we are not kids. We know you won't "go now"

Good and I hope you stay away, never coming back until YOU HAVE THE FACTS.

You come into my and omni's house, disrespect us by accusing someone without proof, disrespect our guests, disrespect your fellow web developers (of which, by virtue of your blanket statement, you are one of them.  As they say, when you point one finger at someone, 4 are pointing back at you) and expect us to side with you? Impossicant!

Now, let me take off my moderator hat (I have been demoted before and don't mind being demoted again.  After all, I am not being paid and I stick to my principles, in case you think I will die of heart attack if I were demoted):

If you as much as dare respond again without facts, I will see to it that the username Kinguche is banned from this board.  If you try and come back again under another name, I will ban that too and keep banning till you get it.  I will also lock this thread so that no one can respond further.  If I had the rights, I would delete it altogether but alas, I can't.

If you have a lawyer and are being told to write what you write, get your money back cos you are getting bad legal advice.  Wale could even counter sue you for libel and false accusation.

Determine your next move(s) CAREFULLY.

here here Afam.  Very ad hominem.  For someone trying to win over my "guilty" verdict for Wale, kinguche has done a bad job.  Being a moderator doesn't mean I have to stay quiet and appear dumb while someone said something yet claimed not to say it. I can't just delete something cos you say so. Who be you?

King:

Dear YAWA TI DE, Remember you r a moderator. Would it av cost you much to callup wale, and ask him whether he has even seen the backend of aratext, not to talk of  "smelling a line of its design code"

That is not within my domain of responsibility.  You are the accuser.  It is your job to do that groundwork yourself.  I guess I need to watch more law-based shows/movies cos you have totally wigged me out with your quote above.  Again, prove to us (again, not to say Wale is innocent) beyond a reasonable doubt that you are right and he is wrong.  Again, I am not defending Wale but saying that he is innocent until proven guilty.  So far, you are yet to prove he is guilty.  Sorry.

As Afam has said, let us stick to the issues here.  Borrow a leaf from my signature file.  I still maintain that if this were a court of law, you would have lost the case - you haven't proven, at least to me, beyond a reasonable doubt that you are telling the truth.  In other words, Wale though maybe not innocent, is yet to be proven guilty, based on the stated allegations.

If you would like to debate other issues, please create another thread for that.  If I find it interesting, I might chip in a cent or 2.  Till then, let's stick to the issues on this particular post. E nu go?  

i want dat post removed immediatelly.

So, kinguche, who posted the above, in part, that I just quoted above? 

Oh, I am sorry, I guess "remove" is not the same thing as "delete"

Assuming this were a court of law, I am sure, Kinguche, that you agree that:

1) I would need ** proof beyond a reasonable doubt ** that your claims are true, and
2) Wale needs his day in court.

In order to even dream of deleting the post/thread, I would need you to satisfy at least #1 above.

I hope you understand. If you don't, flip the script and tell me how you would feel if you were the "victim" and not wale.

here here, Cactus. Yeye people. Sha, I have had experiences where the guilty consciences of such ppl won't let them come back to you, even after you know and they know you know, that they are having problems.

I may need the money, but I do have my principles.

dhtml:

I think in your case, you were asking for a solution in your particular case. The poster here, is asking in general, which is why I in return answered in general here.

You bet though, I was very careful in answering the question here so we don't sound like that nursery school song, "the wheels on the bus go round and round, round and round, round and round, all day long"