Community Network

The Number One Reason You Won't Get Paid

The No. 1 reason you won't get paid is not another "Top 10 Ways to Be Successful on the Web" or an examination of "The Top 3 Things to Look for In a Client or Webmaster". Here are a few excerpts from everyday people. People like you and me. People that work daily on the web.

My webmaster set up my website and has since disappeared off the face of the Earth leaving a complete idiot (me) left to try and manage something I know nothing about.

Our webmaster disappeared a few weeks ago. And suddenly after months online, our secure checkout will not complete an order.

Our webmaster has sort of disappeared so three comedians and a monkey are trying to learn how to do this stuff.

Wow, I realize webmasters are magical people and can create amazing things out of nothing. There's a new phenomena, have't you heard? If you work on the web long enough, you can actually figure out how to completely vanish!

Isn't this a two-way street though? How easy is it to obtain the client when the check is supposed to be in the mail? or They send changes and edits in e-mail, forget the attachments, and then leave for Pago Pago for a month?

I don't have much money, I need my site up and running a.s.a.p., and my current web design company won't return my calls. Let’s just get started, and we can work out the details as we go.

Now she wants to scrap everything I have done, not pay me, and use the "free" website that her parent real estate company is offering to her and all other agents.

I have completed two websites for one client this summer and he was very happy with the work I did. I charged him low $XXXX for each website which I considered to be very reasonable. I also told him that maintenance would be low $XX per hour. He was fine with that.

The time has come to tell you the No.1 reason you will not be getting paid. It's YOU! If you care about keeping a roof over your head, don't ever start a project without a complete understanding in writing: the scope of the project, the terms for payment, and the work that will be needing to be performed once the website is completed. Make sure you publish your terms and conditions in clear public view on your supporting website for your business. Protect yourself, if the client bauks at signing your contracts it wasn't meant to be, move on. You will be better off over the long haul.

Trust is key to any relationship, so let's get that in INK shall we? Once you begin a project, there's no going back. Don't be shy, you will find that contracts with ink hold more water then a mouthful of he said she said. The last IP lawyer I spoke with on the matter requested $600.00 to write a DNC (Do Not Continue/Cease and Desist). Huh? Doesn't that come out to about 1.00 a character? I can rent a billboard for that amount!

You will not be able to claim, in most states, more then $5,000.00 in small claims courts, where you can represent yourself, but what assurance is there if you win, you will get your money? IP lawyers for cases over 5k start the bidding to help you out at $20,000.00. Protect yourself, build strong trusting corporate relationships the proper way, and enjoy that caviar the next time they invite you to their company yacht.

Legal Forms:
Sample Web Site Project Scope
Sample Terms and Conditions for Webmasters
Sample Domain Name Purchase Agreement
Sample Purchase Order
Sample Cease and Desist
Sample Purchase Agreement
Euro - Sample Terms and Conditions
Sample Contract Termination Letter

Stop waiting and style these forms NOW to suit your company, the check is not in the mail!

sources:

Joomla! 3D Wallpapers

Outfit your computer with one of these beautiful 3D generated Joomla! Themed Wallpapers. Perfect for meeting with that new Joomla! client or on large screens at a Training Session. Show the world you're the Joomla! Professional that you are!

Download Joomla! 3D Wallpapers

from the Resource Center
[span class=camera]Click Thumbnails for ShadowBox[/span]

Speaking of Spam II

Written by: C. Stinson - Joomla-Webmasters.com

Install a Honey Pot on your site yet? Sure, why not? Do you labor moving custom reCAPTCHA to all your custom forms and logins? Great! Help digitize books, it's a good cause, but is your site blocking all your spam yet? There's a new kid on the block called "MolloM" that's shaking things up!

Honey Pots run quietly in the background, and yeah, they're sorta fun. Who doesn't like populating global databases for a good cause, the war on Spam! Funny, that none of my honey pots have ever contributed to it though, so it goes.

All the reCAPTCHA evangelists may hate me for this, but it's not stopping the underlying sample and a few others. I guess that sort of injection falls into that .01%. Of course, no spam fighting service is 100% effective.

In an all out war on spam, I'm for the multi-faceted approach. However, none of the Joomla! patches I wait diligently for release seem effective against well crafted injections, either. What's a poor webmaster to do, while your clients are being bogged down with malicious junk in their inboxes and starting to question "why Joomla!?"

You could block by IP as you track them down out of your stats and add them to your .htaccess and banning components in Joomla!, but what a bloated burden. Perishable Press has the right idea concerning a less bloated ban approach.

Perhaps, about the time you get the last call about viagra from your client who sells shoes, you take more drastic measures to hide and protect content. I've even seen folks move to creative ways of coding mailto: using [at] instead of @, that's cool. The special handling you give, the more thought you devote to, the more you realize the battle is extremely one sided. Enter MolloM.

What I like about MolloM so far, is that the free or it's paid service integrates painlessly into Joomla! No seriously, it does! Create an account, get your keys, download Moovur for Joomla! 1.5.x, enter your keys and you're done!

MolloM's Joomla! Component is known as Moovur and it's hot! I love that it already offers the plug-in for JomSocial. You just can't beat this component's less then 5 minute install and it's helpers if you have multiple Joomla! sites to secure. Not to mention, once installed, it locks down all Joomla! forms, comments, and logins along with a few 3rd party extensions out of the box.

Oh! Did I mention that moovur doesn't show a CAPTCHA on your contact form unless it suspects ham or spam? That means your human guests using your contact forms don't have to jump through a CAPTCHA hoop!