Many business Web sites on the Internet have come to resemble neglected orphans, say experts – a result of the many early, small Web development companies that have seemingly vanished in recent years. They’ve vanished and left no records behind for business owners to use to keep their Web sites up to date.
As the creators and caretakers of business Web sites skip town and take the keys to the castle with them, many companies simply ignore the problem, letting their Web sites waste away in a dusty corner of the business plan. Others go for the quick fix, attempting to patch the problem themselves with the use of products like Microsoft FrontPage, bundled with many Office packages.
But anyone with a trained eye can learn to recognize the telltale signs of an orphaned business Web site: lacking technology updates, they are woefully unable to interact with clients, as the Web sites’ secret passwords are lost or guarded by the site’s original developer or a Web-hosting company.
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Often, the site’s owner has no clue what company even hosts his or her Web site on the Web, and fees go unpaid. Many such Web sites also “slam” around from one domain name registrar to another, as unscrupulous registrars dupe unwitting Web site owners into signing on with them – usually charging an annual fee in the process.
What’s a hapless business owner to do?
Make a frantic call to a Web site saver – a new form of superhero in today’s high tech world. The Web site saver will save the day, restoring a business Web site to health by employing a combination of detective skills, persistent cajoling and the occasional well-timed threat to a former Web developer.
“They call and say, ‘I got a Web site and it needs fixing.’ There’s almost always a search involved,” said Graeme Smith, owner of Atlantic Services, a Newport, R.I.-based Web development company. “I’ll say, ‘fine, do you have the names and passwords?’ And the usual response to that is, ‘huh?’”
Smith is a Web site saver – he estimates that 25 to 33 percent of his work involves resuscitating business Web sites that have been abandoned by their original developer, leaving behind no records for maintaining the site.
What Smith does first is visit the business where he asks candidly to rifle their files. If he’s lucky, Smith will find passwords scribbled on the corner of a piece of paper, and other proprietary information needed to work on the Web site, he said.
But more often the Web site presents an impenetrable wall.
Smith’s next step is to contact the original Web site developer, if he can. This person is sometimes an out-of-business individual who doesn’t want to give up proprietary information that is actually owned by the site’s owner. It’s typically a case of sour grapes, said Smith – the site’s original developer doesn’t want to see his or her abandoned baby being nurtured by another developer.
Often, a student working to make cash created these Web sites at the dawn of the Internet era. Or, perhaps it was a lone techie doing it as a side job, said Smith. Many companies still opt for Web development companies that offer the cheapest hourly rates, but it comes at a steep cost, said Smith: Such companies typically employ students who are biting off more than they can chew. The business owner’s needs for the Web site often move beyond the ability of the developer, and they disappear.
“You see a lot of companies fronting for cheap labor. A telltale sign that they are using students as their labor is that when you ask them to come in and take a look at their Web site they say, ‘We can get you from 6:30 onwards tonight,’” said Smith. Students are not usually in class at that time.
In search of the user name and passwords needed to work on a Web site, Smith finds out where the Web site is hosted and where its domain name is registered. Often, he discovers that the Web site’s domain name, user name and passwords are actually registered in the name of the site’s developer instead of its owner.
“And that could be a big shock to a company. Often the domain name isn’t owned by them, but by the developer that disappeared,” said Smith.
The problem is compounded when Smith then goes to the site’s hosting company to get records transferred into the business’s name. Hosting companies sell “server space” where businesses can host their Web sites. Using a hosting company is common in small- and medium-size businesses because the hosting company typically handles security issues for the Web site. But having the host company handle security becomes a problem if the owner can’t prove he or she owns the Web site.
“We call them and say, ‘Hi, we’re the new developer, and we need the user name and password to manipulate the Web site.’ And they say, ‘Well, we need to hear that from the site’s owner,’” said Smith. “After all, you could be a hacker trying to deface the competition’s Web site. You need to get an affidavit from the person with the registration, swearing you’re legitimate and you’re allowed to work on the account. But it can take 10 days to wade through all of this stuff, and we need you to fix our Web site now.”
Unscrupulous registrars have taken to checking the expiration date of business Web site agreements and invoicing them with a thinly veiled transfer agreement just ahead of the business’s real registrar in order to “slam” them over to their company.
It is a variant on the “invoice for a business directory entry” scam practiced by some telephone companies, and it is hard to guard against when a business doesn’t have the records to even know who they should pay, said Smith. As a result, many business owners will pay two or three times in a year without realizing it.
But a bigger headache than the loss of a relatively low dollar amount associated with the scam is the havoc domain name slamming can cause to a Web site. Many businesses maintain their e-mail accounts and the domain names of multiple Web sites with one registrar – a domain name slam can blow all those features. A few days after being unknowingly slammed, many business owners discover that it has happened when their Web site not working, their e-mail turned off and their domain information completely unavailable.
In the end, Smith recommends a checklist for trouble-free Internet ownership: Companies should have their Web sites’ domain names, usernames, and passwords to on-line accounts registered in their companies’ names – not their Web site developer’s. They should keep records of the correct name and address of the registrar they do business with. They should also know the name of their hosting company, the FTP user name and password for adjusting the Web site, and the administrator account name and password for their e-mail service.
“I hate to say it, but it’s like an afterthought for many small- and medium-sized businesses. You wouldn’t dream of not knowing your bank account number and passwords, but that’s the situation you encounter when it comes to many Web sites,” said Smith.
