Web site rescue
- Have you been let down by your old designer?
- Do you need some changes but can't get them done?
- Has the designer started work then stalled, time is dragging on with no progress?
- Has the site just disappeared from the Internet?
Sadly those are not uncommon experiences. Call us. You need our Web site rescue service!
Many web designers response to this kind of problem is to offer to build you a new website.
We regard that as a last resort, we recognise that you have invested time and money and don't want to write it all off. In one instance we were able to recover most of a website in the circumstances that the owner didn't have a copy, they were unable to trace the designer, the hosting company had deleted the site because the now absent designer hadn't paid them.
If you don't have a backup copy of your own website and the designer isn't being very helpful then ask us, we can usually make a backup for you.
Maybe you've been trying your hand at making your own web site and hit an aspect that just doesn't seem to work as you intended. Yes we'll see if we can sort the problem out for you.
Case Study 1
A businessman had purchased a failed business from the administrators. The deal included the website but he chose not to re-employ all the former staff. The employee responsible for the web site was amongst those not re-employed and was somewhat aggrieved at having lost her job. As soon as we became aware of the purchase we took a full backup of the web site. Unfortunately we were too late. The section of the web site that was dedicated to the best selling and most profitable products was missing.
Nevertheless, within a matter of hours Web Technik were even able to recover the missing pages and reinstate the website (protected with a new password). The new owner wrote"First of all thanks for saving my life! It is all fine...".
A few weeks later when he'd got other aspects of the business fixed he gave us the go-ahead to undertake a fuller re-work the website as the original had been created by an "ethusiastic amateur" and so was neither easy to use nor "search engine friendly". We were able to re-use most of the original images and text and this helped keep the cost down.
Case Study 2
A small business had purchased a web site from a designer and had become very dependent on it. Then one day they found it was no longer available. They attempted to contact the designer - he had moved away and they were unable to trace him. He had not paid the renewal and hosting fees and had registered the domain name (web address) in his own name. Sheffield Business Link asked if we could help. Recovering the domain wasn't going to be a quick process, however we were able to recover most of the web pages and set the customer up new hosting under a very similar web address same day. We advised the customer on the mechanism to try to get the original name reallocated to themselves.
This illustrates several important points:
- Ensure your domain names are registered to your business or sole proprietor
- Ensure that you have a complete backup copy of your website
- Ensure that domain name and hosting renewals are kept up to date, ideally by reliable experts
- Regrettably the business in question failed to learn one important lesson. Despite their bad experience and against the advice of Business Link, rather than face the reality that cheap is the enemy of "good" and "reliable" they had a replacement website built by someone else - cheap in every sense of the word.