The past couple of months have been a nightmare! We wanted a new design for our store, as it was looking old now.
With hindsight I should have gone with a lady I know, that designed our 2nd store, but with regret I chose a tech guy as I thought he might be cheaper, but it turned out I was wrong! The other store cost me $80 and took 2/3 days to complete with only one minor issue.
The tech guy took 2 months and almost destroyed the store!! We were looking for a free store template to start, that was proving difficult, he showed me one design, which looked like an old lady's house with flowers all over the background...I should have bailed out at that point! Another design was too masculine and boring! Then I showed him the other store and said can he do one like this! It's a clean and simple design, but looks great.
So he starts working on it, and over night he decided to update the PHP!!! BIG MISTAKE!!! That meant the scripts installed for Multi Vendors, free gifts and image handler no longer worked DISASTER #1 When I told him that he should not have done that, and that the reason for us not updating was because the scripts only work on older versions!! He said I needed to get the host to restore it......another bad move which turned out to be DISASTER #2!!
The host is a private host not a big company, we sit on his own Server with a few other similar stores!
Just lately he has been very grumpy with me for some unknown reason. I hated having to ask him to help with store issues, but had no choice on this one, and was dreading that conversation! So putting on my big girl pants! I went with cap in hand to get the store restored from backups! HE was not happy, he treats the store as his own baby as he was the one that rebuilt it when we first purchased the store. He hates us getting these tech's from other countries, but he does not understand it is OUR store and we need some jobs doing! We used to have a great Canadian tech that had done lots of jobs for us, but he got a new job and sadly we have not seen him since.
So the host looks at our backups selects two relevant backups then looks through the store for things that had changed or needed updating.....he also started removing anything that he felt should not be there prior to restoring what he considered "relevant backups"!!! As a result he wiped out all the good work the Canadian Tech had done in terms of our security and required European Cookies Policy and Licenced Cart access etc!! It also messed up the ReCaptcha forms! Between the PHP Update and the Restore it created lots of issues in the store. The host blaming the new tech and vice versa!! Plus I had to pay for the restore, which would have been free on other professional hosts!!
After restore the tech said he would still complete the design with no additional charges! I was a bit reluctant to go down that route! (time to bail out again?) Reluctantly agreed to him completing it as we had initially paid for it!
So as the design progressed more and more issues kept arising and he was doing his best to sort them. But there were a few he was unable to fix, ie links to a few buttons!!! Granted the store is not as easy as a standard website to do! Plus he did not even know how to get the header centred as he was worried it would cause a problem with something else he had fixed!! So I had to accept it, and not liking the position of the header!! (left aligned!!).
It took a 2nd month to get the design completed after the restore!! I also asked the grumpy host if he could fix the 2/3 links that the tech was unable to fix and he said no!!
!! 
Finally! a few days ago the store design is "FINISHED!" (But still finding a few little issues! Plus previous updates the Canadian tech had done that had been wiped out!!!).
Still regretting getting this guy to update the design and wishing I had asked the other lady and also wishing the Canadian guy would return to help restore all the vital scripts he had added to the store!!
All this going on over the Christmas period where I am always busy with family birthdays as well as preparing for Christmas and new year, till a few days ago, it was a Nightmare!!
On the bright side, life is slowly returning to normality! It was my birthday yesterday, and had a great day letting my hair down with family, bowling and a meal and to forget about the past couple of months!
My sanity returns to fight another day!
With hindsight I should have gone with a lady I know, that designed our 2nd store, but with regret I chose a tech guy as I thought he might be cheaper, but it turned out I was wrong! The other store cost me $80 and took 2/3 days to complete with only one minor issue.
The tech guy took 2 months and almost destroyed the store!! We were looking for a free store template to start, that was proving difficult, he showed me one design, which looked like an old lady's house with flowers all over the background...I should have bailed out at that point! Another design was too masculine and boring! Then I showed him the other store and said can he do one like this! It's a clean and simple design, but looks great.
So he starts working on it, and over night he decided to update the PHP!!! BIG MISTAKE!!! That meant the scripts installed for Multi Vendors, free gifts and image handler no longer worked DISASTER #1 When I told him that he should not have done that, and that the reason for us not updating was because the scripts only work on older versions!! He said I needed to get the host to restore it......another bad move which turned out to be DISASTER #2!!
The host is a private host not a big company, we sit on his own Server with a few other similar stores!
Just lately he has been very grumpy with me for some unknown reason. I hated having to ask him to help with store issues, but had no choice on this one, and was dreading that conversation! So putting on my big girl pants! I went with cap in hand to get the store restored from backups! HE was not happy, he treats the store as his own baby as he was the one that rebuilt it when we first purchased the store. He hates us getting these tech's from other countries, but he does not understand it is OUR store and we need some jobs doing! We used to have a great Canadian tech that had done lots of jobs for us, but he got a new job and sadly we have not seen him since.
So the host looks at our backups selects two relevant backups then looks through the store for things that had changed or needed updating.....he also started removing anything that he felt should not be there prior to restoring what he considered "relevant backups"!!! As a result he wiped out all the good work the Canadian Tech had done in terms of our security and required European Cookies Policy and Licenced Cart access etc!! It also messed up the ReCaptcha forms! Between the PHP Update and the Restore it created lots of issues in the store. The host blaming the new tech and vice versa!! Plus I had to pay for the restore, which would have been free on other professional hosts!!
After restore the tech said he would still complete the design with no additional charges! I was a bit reluctant to go down that route! (time to bail out again?) Reluctantly agreed to him completing it as we had initially paid for it!
So as the design progressed more and more issues kept arising and he was doing his best to sort them. But there were a few he was unable to fix, ie links to a few buttons!!! Granted the store is not as easy as a standard website to do! Plus he did not even know how to get the header centred as he was worried it would cause a problem with something else he had fixed!! So I had to accept it, and not liking the position of the header!! (left aligned!!).
It took a 2nd month to get the design completed after the restore!! I also asked the grumpy host if he could fix the 2/3 links that the tech was unable to fix and he said no!!
!! Finally! a few days ago the store design is "FINISHED!" (But still finding a few little issues! Plus previous updates the Canadian tech had done that had been wiped out!!!).
Still regretting getting this guy to update the design and wishing I had asked the other lady and also wishing the Canadian guy would return to help restore all the vital scripts he had added to the store!!
All this going on over the Christmas period where I am always busy with family birthdays as well as preparing for Christmas and new year, till a few days ago, it was a Nightmare!!
On the bright side, life is slowly returning to normality! It was my birthday yesterday, and had a great day letting my hair down with family, bowling and a meal and to forget about the past couple of months!
My sanity returns to fight another day!
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