Mo Chridhe

I’m so incredibly appalled. Stressed. Annoyed. DISGUSTED.

Awhile ago, I mentioned the rink owner agreed to letting me redesign the website, since malware had taken it over.

I began the project yesterday, and spent SEVEN HOURS on it. They were using Gate Hosting, which let me suggest you NEVER use (it’s REALLY SLOW and tries to manipulate you into paying more money) so after much deliberation about how I wanted to go about removing the virus, I erased everything. All the files, images, etc. And I started over.

I faced another issue, as their account with Gate wasn’t up till July 2nd (plus, I didn’t have a credit card to make a Bluehost account.) Lightbulb moment, hook it up to my Bluehost account, since god knows I have the space. I did that, added on the domain, and waited for the DNS servers to catch up. I then installed the Concrete5 plugin and went from there.

I should have taken screenshots of what it looked like while I was in the process of redesigning. If you knew what the old site looked like, you’d know this looked fucking amazing. And I’m not just saying that because I designed it; IT REALLY LOOKED GOOD. Duh, I still had like ten pages to put up, more calendars and information, in addition to the header image and slideshows. But for just starting it, hell yeah!

And guess what? I EVEN MANAGED TO GET GOOGLE TO REINDEX IT AS A SAFE SITE. No more being flagged as suspicious, as having malware, of being dangerous. The virus is gone. THANKS TO ME! Because guess what? In the month the site had the virus, NO ONE removed it. Or attempted to remove it! NO ONE!

I don’t know if this is a joke to this family, or what. I see that we have competitors. I see that customers judge businesses on the quality of their websites. To me, if I fucking VOLUNTEER to redesign your fucking website, I’m going to do it right. I already go to school full-time! I already have a part-time job! I already am battling with a puppy! I already am in the process of getting adjusted to a new city! I already figure skate! I already have a LIFE! You think I’d offer my services to you FOR FREE for FUN!? People do web-design as a FULL-TIME JOB!! You think I’d offer to redesign the website if I didn’t know how to do it?!??!? I fucking kid you not, I was asked if I knew “what the hell” I was doing by one of their sons.

I received a voicemail this morning from the owner- this is where things started spiraling out of control. The voicemail she left me? I’ve met some rude, mean people in my life, but I have NEVER met anyone THIS HORRIBLE who would say things like that to me when ALL I WAS DOING WAS TRYING TO HELP. I have the clip of her voicemail if anyone is interested (I know a lot of you have already heard it), and she places these wild accusations on me that she can’t even back up! AND SHE’S SUPPOSED TO BE A FUCKING LAWYER!

I called her back furious but attempting to keep my emotions in check. Hillary was right next to me when I returned her call, and while I didn’t scream at the owner, I wasn’t the nicest person in the world. Basically, this woman wants to blame everyone but herself. Website? Not her problem. Zamboni? Someone will get it done. She’s supposed to not only be the rink owner, but also the rink MANAGER and she’s NEVER FUCKING AROUND. And when she is? “Oh yeah… oops, I forgot to schedule someone to open Saturday!” No joke. This is supposed to be a BUSINESS, not a shithole laughingstock.

Anyway, she called me to inform me she wanted everything transferred back. I honestly wish I was kidding. Apparently, little M has gotten jealous that oh, hello, SOMEONE ELSE IS BETTER THAN ME AT MAINTAINING A WEBSITE! and he spread lies to Mommy so he could put up his template. This kid doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing. He’s been the webmaster for a year now, and things would disappear from the website, or never get put up in the first place. Not to mention his grammar and spelling are terrible! He now thinks he’s uploaded his files to the FTP server, but he clearly hasn’t… since I CHANGED THE PASSWORD YESTERDAY and didn’t tell anyone the new one. I really have no clue what he’s putting where, but it sure isn’t a template on the FTP server! Plus, let’s not forget the fact that he’s been out of school for what, three, four weeks now, and has had all this time to figure out how to get the virus off? All this time to fix the site? And did he? NO.

It’s not my problem I’m more motivated and driven than these people, but I do feel sorry for the customers who no longer have a website and probably won’t for awhile, until (IF) little M can figure everything out.