Tropical Blogging

So I have — er, had — this client. Let’s call him Mr. X. I didn’t design his website originally; I inherited him from a colleague who had designed it and was hosting it, and who wanted to get out of the business altogether. The colleague had Mr. X’s domain registered in his own account, and he transferred the domain to me. So I was hosting Mr. X’s site (at a very reasonable cost), and a couple of times Mr. X contacted me to make minor updates to his site, which I did. Other than billing him quarterly for his hosting and annually for his domain renewal, and those couple of minor updates, I didn’t have any other contact with Mr. X. Next thing I know, Mr. X calls me to tell me that he’s hired someone else to develop a new site for him, (more…)

Copyright law seems to be poorly misunderstood by a great many people. I’m not an attorney, and I’m particularly not a copyright or intellectual property attorney, but I believe I have an informed layman’s understanding of copyright matters. Knowing the basics of copyright law and the legal issues surrounding the use of copyrighted material can help one stay out of trouble. I’ve had two recent copyright issues that might be helpful to discuss. (more…)

So I have a client I’m developing a website for. The client has been great to work with, and we’ve made good progress on the new site. But there was a problem: The client kept complaining that he couldn’t reach his site — he was getting “not found” error messages. He told me that he could, at one point, get to the site without the “www” — which was particularly strange because one of the first things I do on a new site is implement a 301 permanent redirect from the non-www to the www version of the URL. (more…)