A friend and I hired someone off odesk/elance to build a Drupal based website for us. We have 0 experience with Drupal. We purposely went with a US based firm but now I really understand why people go offshore now. This guy couldn't even get half of the features of the website working so I had to continually get rid of some items and try to settle for a non-working version of the website. The project got delayed by more than a month. The website is nowhere near finished and we're still trying to get some questions answered on where or how to fix glaring appearance issues. These are 5 second changes such as where do I change "Text" to "Texts" but he continually avoids answering the questions. If he doesn't want to make the changes (because of who knows what), why can't this guy tell us where we need to edit so that we can do it myself? This guy also promised to provide documentation of the website so that we can better understand it and so that we can pass it off to another freelancer to continue the work. We don't even know which version of Drupal he used. This guy is taking no responsibility for the bugs he created which can be fixed in 5 seconds by him and providing no guidance on how we can fix the rest. He rarely responds to emails. What would cause someone to act like this? What are my courses of action?
By brianl79 on
Comments
Do you have access to the
Do you have access to the hosting and can you login to drupal (try website.com/user/login)? If so, start fixing.
It might be though that you have actually paid for his service, which is to host a website for you, but he owns/controls the website/database/etc. In which case, youre probably screwed.
_
This has nothing to do with drupal-- there are no official "drupal freelancers". This has everything to do with the process of selecting and screening and not the particulars of the technology involved.
Unfortunately, when hiring freelancers, particularly online, there are charlatans everywhere-- including 'offshore'.
Those frelancer link-up type
Those frelancer link-up type of sites tend to encourage clients to hire a cheap developer. Hiring someone expensive is maybe not a guarantee of quality but it greatly increases your chance of quality. Because Drupal skills are expensive in the market, hiring someone cheap makes the chance of getting poor quality work relatively much more likely. By 'cheap' and 'expensive' I would think that $20 per hour (or equivalent for flat rate job) is low for a freelancer, and $200 is high. Going offshore is also a risk. The more skilled Drupal people probably tend not to seek work on auction type sites which emphasise price competition, because they are competing on quality rather than price.
Digit Professionals specialising in Drupal, WordPress & CiviCRM support for publishers in non-profit and related sectors
Caveat Emptor
I realize this may be too little to late, but bad projects have a way of being long tortures. I've been reading different comments about freelancers on Drupal.org, and this strikes me as particularly interesting. I will tell you this:
* In Mexico we have a saying: "A paid musician plays a bad tune". If you want to foster commitment, link deliverables to payment. That way you limit your losses and you have leverage with your developers.
* There is no territorial quality assurance: I have seen great developers in India, in the US, in Russia, etc. And the worst in the same places. Be it Elance or out of it, cheap or expensive.
I know Elance has a rep for cheap poor quality developers. True, but it's up to you to choose who you hire, and how you do it. We have taken to using Elance to build up our international presence, since it is difficult to crack the borders of any country and offer your services. We have had wonderful experiences with our clients, who have asked challenging work that we have managed to deliver on time and on budget. We are the first to acknowledge that we have a lot to learn (that's what we like of this business), but we do commit to jobs (we do have a full satisfaction or no charge warranty).
What I can offer you or any other Drupal end-customer: tell us your woes, and we will try to steer you in the right direction, whether that means business for us or not. Our foremost aim is to help people, if we do it well, business may follow, but the mutual satisfaction is guaranteed. If we know a little more about your predicament we may be able to help you.
Feel free to contact us directly.
Sadly that's not so
Sadly that's not so unusual.
The problem isn't the country in which he lives, it's his skill level or professionalism. Sadly some American firms simply send the work overseas. They don't actually know anything themselves. That may explain why he can't answer your questions.
I've inherited plenty of terrible websites made overseas on the cheap only to redo most of the work. You usually get what you pay for.
The rates and prices on those sites are so low I can't imagine anyone worth their salt using them. With any experience, they could easily charge much more.
Developers are not a commodity. We're not all the same, nor do we produce the same results.
We structure our work by the hour and bill monthly as we go. We have regular progress meetings so the client always knows what's going on. An unhappy client could simply stop at any time, though this has never happened.
Its not correct to blame all frelancers or drupal frelancers
Its not right to blame all the drupal developers because some one have had issue with yours. There are everywhere fraud frelancers, firms as well as project bidders who later does not pay the remaining amount and adds additional features.
First check, if the site is hosted on your server? you should have c-Panel details.
If yes, then change all c-Panel and FTP passwords.
Also, as its drupal site, you must have admin panel access. Check the admin panel and change its password.
From the admin panel Content area start finding your pages, make text changes from there. Though this will not take to 100% text change, but, it will start you make going.