Saving the Web, One Site at a Time

Once again we have found ourselves working to save some web sites abandoned by their developer. What’s going on out there? Bad code, bad business practices, bad choices, really bad communication. Is it time to turn web development in to a real profession with standards and certification like doctors and lawyers and contractors? I don’t know. I certainly don’t know what the mechanisms are for creating such a system. And I certainly don’t mind helping people clean up after the mess they made (clients are always somewhat at fault in these fiascos one way or another).

But maybe there’s a market out there for salvaging sinking web projects after all. I half facetiously mentioned this in an earlier post. One commenter suggested that there is no guarantee the fixer would do nothing more than make matters worse. Of course, that’s true of any profession.

Sometimes these salvage projects have more to do with hosting services than development so that stretches into another service that may need some regulation or certification. How do you know if a company is trustworthy until things start to go really wrong? And most site owners do not have enough technical understanding to  discern a quality service at a good value from one that is not.

On a whim I registered webemts.com (for web emergency medical technicians) and stuck Drupal on there. No content yet. But it’s a whim. I’d love to hear what anyone else thinks of this idea.