BUILDING THE WEBSITE
This website is the result of over six years of effort. Shortly before 12-21-12, I selected the domain name and began using godaddy’s archaic ‘website builder’ to begin the process. After the initial work and building a rudimentary platform, I ceased the process when I had a spiritual crisis in 2013. By this time, The Plan was not completely fleshed out, yet the ideas were essentially the same.
When I did begin working on the website again, I made a lot of progress, but then lost all of my work when I got behind on payments to godaddy, and I also had to buy back the domain name at a much higher price. This was by far the worst thing the company did, claiming that data storage was an issue for them, but in light of their rationale for doing other things, there was no reason to trust this company’s integrity. It was very distressing losing my content, yet I started the process again.
When I had the idea to build a connection platform in 2016, I began looking for a professional to help me. Thinking it would be best to work with someone in my hometown, I interviewed a few people, and decided upon a man whom I met and seemed to do decent work, and who was charging unusually low prices. It was a disaster. He did not design the website with any sense of aesthetic, merely transferring all of my content over. I let him know tactfully that it was not what I wanted, and he ended up calling me names and threatening me. I have a record of this exchange. His work was unusable, but I decided that paying him $150 was better than receiving any more threats from this psychopath.
Not longer after, I found someone else to work with. She lived in New Jersey, and I found out soon after that she was using Indian labor to build her websites. Communication with both her and her employees was frustrating to say the least. She did not answer her phone, did not keep scheduled appointments, and I ignored the red flag of one who is incapable of typing with proper grammar and punctuation. After numerous attempts to get them to get the work done properly and on time, I gave up, costing me $550. Fortunately, the work they did could be used by the next designer to build off of, although the formatting was incompatible.
The third designer I worked with lived in Michigan, and I did a skype interview with him beforehand to make sure his head was screwed on straight. He asked $750 for the design, and another $750 to build the connection platform. In the knick of time, he finished the design elements in two weeks, like he had promised, and I had a working website. The connection platform, however, took many more months to complete which was okay for a little while, given that I had broken my leg and had temporarily ceased my efforts. Yet, time dragged, and just before I was going to call him to let him go, he surprised me by finishing it. The website was now usable for my purposes. Before our farewells, he surprised me with nearly $500 in extra fees, never telling me explicitly how much time it would take to do the things I asked for, nor making clear that the work was beyond the scope of what was included in the price. He also did not teach me how to manage the site, which was part of our original understanding. I did my best in the beginning to establish how important communication was, yet it still broke down. He was not bad to work with, but certainly not good. Merely neutral.
The fourth designer lived in the state of New York, and was pleasant to deal with for the most part, although she did not state up front that she was selling me a ‘monthly package’, in which my website would need regular maintenance. Had I known that this was what she was selling, I would have never agreed to work with her, although she seems to believe that she made this clear. My memory has suffered due to lyme disease and other trauma, but I do not forget things like this. I paid her about $170 for one month out of a sense of guilt, and then stopped working with her. She never did deliver the one hour of work on the website she had agreed to.
After the fourth developer, I tried to find help, but mostly gave up. I interviewed several people, doing my best to find someone who resonated with the content of Dissolving the Dream, but it was a lost cause. I began thinking that web developers would need to be placed in a category beneath lawyers and car salesman. Fortunately, my contract with godaddy ended, so I switched my hosting over to Bluehost, which has been a far better experience.
In January of 2019, I once again gave finding a developer a shot, calling Bluehost to see if they could assist me with SEO and marketing, and also called a few other independent people. I immediately heard back from Ken Townshend, of House of Digital Dreams, and so far, he has been doing great work, and really cares. He also lives locally, and I’ve met with him at length, twice thus far. In order to deliver the website I truly desire, he has had to rebuild the site due to formatting issues and design flaws. The new design is more modern, user friendly, and ideal for establishing connections. I hope to be with him for the long haul.
So, as you see it’s been a difficult process, costing me several thousand dollars when factoring in all of the fees associated with hosting as well. This website has not been built to do business, but has been built from a deep conviction that this work is extremely important. If it were not so, it would not exist, for it has been highly stressful, and hundreds, if not thousands of hours have been spent building the content.
There are bumper stickers which can be purchased, and my other website -www.adamroseproductions.com – has music for sale, yet there have been few sales thus far. Dissolving the Dream is in no way a profit making scheme. Please consider supporting my work in some way, if not financially, with a note of gratitude, as sometimes a compliment serves as the necessary fuel for me to make it through the day. If you would like to help in any way, by all means, contact me.
Thanks for reading.
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