Are you a Bob?

I am in a local WhatsApp web development group.  A colleague shared the post below in the group and thought I should share this with you as I too have come across very similar scenarios towards the end of last year.  Sadly, people lost lots of money. Lets hope we can prevent this in future.

So here is a conundrum. I have a client (lets call him Bob)

I built a site for bob many years ago, hosted and maintained. Bob found a ‘cheaper’ web developer and moved over to him 1 year ago. Fine with me, Bob was a bit difficult to work with.

Bob realised the new developer is not all cut out to be, cant even setup a simple Recaptcha. So Bob wants to move back to me.

New developer kills the site, refuses wp-admin access, refuses Cpanel or ftp access. Claiming he uses propriety custom software. (fun fact: Its WordPress + Elementor)

So he provides an xml file, no images, nothing. Now Bob is sitting with no site, dead emails and an xml file without any images. Bob has over 100 pages/posts.

I advised Bob to send a strongly worded legal letter to this new developer to handover the entire site including all images, folders & db.

In summary, the entry level to web design and especially using WordPress as a development tool is very low.  Anyone can pick it up and claim to know what they doing.  So do your due diligence and check for thorough reviews before handing over your site to a developer (wannabe) and remember, cheap comes at a price.

Most important.  Make sure your domain name www.yourname.co.za is registered in your name.  You can ask for confirmation of ownership if you do not get an annual email from the domain registrar to renew your domain name.