[suzzer99]

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This isn't my line of business, I'm more on the receiving end, but I've had to put up with enough crap to be able to say a thing or two.

If you are getting any web-design job done, make sure you set some things straight before going ahead with whatever developer you are dealing with.

Firstly if you value any kind of confidentiallity get an NDA (Non disclosure agreement) signed between you. Make it as extensive as you wish. If they have a problem with any of the content they will let you know.

Your designer will give you an estimated build time. In my experience the speed of completion is ALWAYS overestimated. E.g if they say 2 months, expect it in 4 months. You have to make it clear to them at the start that you are aware of the delays that can come up during development and that you want absolute assurance that they do their best to deliver when they say they do. You may try figure some kind of deal to protect yourself from this, such as reduced fee if completed x amount of days over deadline. Although finding a company who would agree to this may be hard.

Most developers will give you a quote for the whole build which reflects their standard $$$/hour, and other associated costs. This quote doesn't change throughout the build. Since they know they will be getting their money either way, it doesn't really matter to them when the job is finished, because they are getting their money for hours put in either way.

If the development company is busy and working on multiple projects at once, they may have so much going on that coordinating a build and delivering it when promised becomes impossible.

Another thing, if you want X solution built, to combine with Y and resolve problem Z, developers may be aware that X+Y wont resolve Z, but they will build X and charge you for it anyway. Then you find out that Z isn't resolved, but hey, it's not their fault because you only asked them to build X. So, interrogate and confirm and explain the full scope of your problem, and make sure what you want done is what's needed to be done.

If you are going to hire a company, I'd recommend going through their portfolios and contacting anyone who they have worked for before, and making sure they are not a bunch of cowboys.

As I'm saying this, I just want to say that there are great and honest web developers out there. But there are definately those who will mess you around and not really care about the true resolve of your solution.

-Cian

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This is very interesting to hear from the receiving end. I'm a web developer who's worked on everything from one page websites to $10 million corporate projects with an AJAX front end. At many different places I've had to clean up after soooooo many horribly done jobs--both by internal employees who had no clue what they were doing--and by external shops that also had no idea what they were doing, and managed to rape the client in the process. It's hard to say which is worse to clean up after, generally the latter.

In my estimation you could do all the stuff you list above right and still have about a 50/50 chance of getting royally screwed. But at least that's down from maybe a 75% chance of disaster 5 years ago and a 95% chance 10 years ago.