Who's at Fault? Designer vs Client dispute, interested in your opinions

audio90 · 02-13-2010, 06:57 PM

Hi there,

A recent dispute came up that made me wonder who is really in the wrong here and I thought who better to ask for feedback/opinions/poll than the community of peers here. I wasn't sure here to post this, I hope here is alright.

Recently I had some trouble getting the Featured Content Gallery to work on my site, which is www.manmeetswoman.com. I hired a designer, who shall remain anonymous, who said he could troubleshoot it in 30 mins. Great. It worked.

However, it seems a missing closing DIV tag made the site look messed up in Internet Explorer (the shrinking text problem that others have had) and from about 6am Friday morning to almost 6am Saturday morning, the site was unviewable by IE users.

This was especially tragic as this is the one day of the year that I go all out and buy over a thousand dollars of newspaper advertising and 80% of my visitors were on IE. I can tell you that I've lost a lot of traffic and money on Friday which won't repeat until next Valentines day. Yes, total loss, more than total loss in fact.

Here is the issue in contention.

I was working on trying to make FCG work, as I had made it work in my other site and was trying to retrace how I did it (it was through reading old threads here) and was exactly in the middle of working with the code in the custom_functions.php and the custom.css files when I hired the designer as I didn't have time to mess with it further and he was complaining that he wanted to get started ASAP (I had been intermittently way from the computer).

He gets it working, the IE has the viewing problem and I and the creator of my skin look over the code but can't figure out what went wrong.

It turns it this was the problem (from my custom_functions.php)

Code:

<div id="header_addon">

        <div id="header_featured">

<?php global $post;

include (ABSPATH . '/wp-content/plugins/featured-content-gallery/gallery.php'); ?>

    </div>
</div>  <-----this one was missing.

Now, I noticed it missing when he made the correction, but I am not a designer (I am learning by trial and error, never taken a CSS class) but he insisted that the problem is from nothing he did.

So I never looked back at the file and that area until about 5am Saturday morning when I was thinking really hard about everything that could have happened to the site and suddenly remembered that funny feeling I had about seeing only one closing div tag.

The Dispute

I think its the designers fault as a) he was to troubleshoot the FCG and his fix was right in that div area and he should have fixed that and b) had he had not insisted that it's nothing wrong on his part, I would have looked in there as part of my combing over right away on Friday, I looked at everything BUT his work. He was brought on to troubleshoot, not cause an even bigger problem.

He says its my fault as, since I was working in that area right when I hired him, *I* had left the DIV out originally (which I don't deny, I did leave it out, amongst other things, which is why he was brought on) and thus it's all my fault and not his.

So whose fault is this, in this case? Please don't say it's both our faults as I don't think that is the case here.

Please contribute your opinion.

02-13-2010, 06:57 PM	#1
audio90 New Member Join Date: Feb 2010 Posts: 1	Who's at Fault? Designer vs Client dispute, interested in your opinions Hi there, A recent dispute came up that made me wonder who is really in the wrong here and I thought who better to ask for feedback/opinions/poll than the community of peers here. I wasn't sure here to post this, I hope here is alright. Recently I had some trouble getting the Featured Content Gallery to work on my site, which is www.manmeetswoman.com. I hired a designer, who shall remain anonymous, who said he could troubleshoot it in 30 mins. Great. It worked. However, it seems a missing closing DIV tag made the site look messed up in Internet Explorer (the shrinking text problem that others have had) and from about 6am Friday morning to almost 6am Saturday morning, the site was unviewable by IE users. This was especially tragic as this is the one day of the year that I go all out and buy over a thousand dollars of newspaper advertising and 80% of my visitors were on IE. I can tell you that I've lost a lot of traffic and money on Friday which won't repeat until next Valentines day. Yes, total loss, more than total loss in fact. Here is the issue in contention. I was working on trying to make FCG work, as I had made it work in my other site and was trying to retrace how I did it (it was through reading old threads here) and was exactly in the middle of working with the code in the custom_functions.php and the custom.css files when I hired the designer as I didn't have time to mess with it further and he was complaining that he wanted to get started ASAP (I had been intermittently way from the computer). He gets it working, the IE has the viewing problem and I and the creator of my skin look over the code but can't figure out what went wrong. It turns it this was the problem (from my custom_functions.php) Code: <div id="header_addon"> <div id="header_featured"> <?php global $post; include (ABSPATH . '/wp-content/plugins/featured-content-gallery/gallery.php'); ?> </div> </div> <-----this one was missing. Now, I noticed it missing when he made the correction, but I am not a designer (I am learning by trial and error, never taken a CSS class) but he insisted that the problem is from nothing he did. So I never looked back at the file and that area until about 5am Saturday morning when I was thinking really hard about everything that could have happened to the site and suddenly remembered that funny feeling I had about seeing only one closing div tag. The Dispute I think its the designers fault as a) he was to troubleshoot the FCG and his fix was right in that div area and he should have fixed that and b) had he had not insisted that it's nothing wrong on his part, I would have looked in there as part of my combing over right away on Friday, I looked at everything BUT his work. He was brought on to troubleshoot, not cause an even bigger problem. He says its my fault as, since I was working in that area right when I hired him, I had left the DIV out originally (which I don't deny, I did leave it out, amongst other things, which is why he was brought on) and thus it's all my fault and not his. So whose fault is this, in this case? Please don't say it's both our faults as I don't think that is the case here. Please contribute your opinion.

Thread Tools
Show Printable Version Email this Page
Display Modes
Linear Mode Switch to Hybrid Mode Switch to Threaded Mode