I'm sure I'm not the only one who has noticed the tendency among Nigerian web developers to pick cheap hosting packages that don't fit the purpose intended.

For example, I run a personal blog which gets at most 300 hits a day -- which is within my bandwidth limit. I use 1 and 1 hosting and use the cheapest package. If I were to get significantly higher traffic I'd purchase more bandwidth instantly.

Most Nigerian celebrity websites don't last long because lots of people visit them -- and the webmasters pick small packages like mine to host the sites on. They might even use several domains under a single plan.

An example would be Sound Sultan's website. I visited it today and I got a 509 Bandwidth Exceeded Error. I looked up the whois information for the domain and I discovered it's hosted with my host (1 & 1 LLC).

I've had the same problem with many celebrity websites. Don't webmasters reason in terms of bandwidth and plan accordingly?

I know Seun "Alariwo" Osewa of Nairaland is an exception -- I've never seen Nairaland down because of bandwidth -- but most Nigerian webmasters just think of their cash and the design. I'd like to know your opinions.

zahy I feel ya on that.

I have a cousin-in-law (is there such? ) who sets up cybercafes for people nationwide there. He says most of them refuse to spend the extra money to set up anti-virus software, yet are the first to cry to him for help when something goes wrong.

It is the "I am smarter than you because either I am older than you or because I have been in the game longer than you" syndrome. Typical naija mentality that manifests itself pretty much in every aspect of our lives.

Again, just because someone has mastered frontpage/dreamweaver and perhaps has copied templates off of another site doesn't make the person a webmaster. You don't erect a 2-storey building on a foundation meant for a bungalow . A good site starts with architecture. Here are my initial questions for clients:

1) what is this site for?
2) who is the intended audience?
3) what products/services do you hv to offer?
4) Is there anything in particular you would like to see (like color scheme, etc)?
5) Any graphics or flash on the site?

Note, I haven't mentioned money or number of pages, etc. Coding and final presentation is always at the bottom of the heap for me. It consists of only about 10% at the most of my efforts. Like a doctor, the more you get the client to talk, the better you wil be at satisfying him/her as well as even getting the person to drop the pepper.

When I do mention money (usually at the end), they tend to ask "y should i pay you N500K when okoronkwo down the street charges only N15K for the same thing?". At that point, I just tell them to go ahead. Frontpage/Dreamweaver don't make a man. Usually it isn't just a high number of users that overwhelm a site. Excessive use of tables, graphics etc play a part too. By removing unnecessary white space at www.autotrader.com , a colleague of mine saved the company $20,000 a month in bandwidth

thatz my 2 cents

my2cents:

. . .When I do mention money (usually at the end), they tend to ask "y should i pay you N500K when okoronkwo down the street charges only N15K for the same thing?". At that point, I just tell them to go ahead. . .

Okoronkwo . That's what I say too. Someone from back home asked me if I could build a static HTML site for a friend -- that was today. I know how it goes -- whatever I bill him, he bills his friend x * 2 -- but I don't really care about that. I told him I was charging $1000 (N140,000) for a plain HTML site. The guy ran off -- I didn't bother to cut any prices. Nigerians haven't realized that quality comes at a price.

Speaking of that experience problem, I remember how it was for me back in Nigeria. Everytime I had to go for a presentation, I had to grow a beard so that I wouldn't look 'young.'

I was several times ousted by guys who put up some nasty frontpage templates. I stopped trying to get contracts.

Gradually but steadily, most business owners are beginning to realise that good websites don't come dirty cheap.

With outfits experiencing crashed servers and big organisations siezing domain names to prevent the owners from going elsewhere, its just a matter of time before prospective website owners will start looking for reliable solution providers.

Bottomline? You get what you pay for. I have packages ranging from N20,000.00 to N360,000.00, I simply provide prospective clients with valuable information and allow them to make up their minds. I get to charge them if I must help them choose a plan.

I hope soon, because the population of cybercafe Frontpage webmasters (Dreamweaver is still overkill in their ticker-tape brains) has grown tremendously since several 419 bank websites successfully fell many a mugu of late.

Now they are transfering their skills to Corporate nigeria. armed with TV-style flash pages and whiz-bangs (I am sure those things are hypnotic) they have edged reason over the cliff in the minds of "educated" business executives.
It is now a branding thing for most people. so lately, they do not charge cheap, they call rocket-prices like 3 million naira and probably get 2.5million and deliver the cheap facade as usual.

No amount of logic and standards-aligned argument will get web contracts from companies in the money band between MTN and Mr Biggs. they are simply out to look good and if it means fireworks and anything to catch attention, so be it

I am seriously tempted to do the same and grab the money, you would not believe what a "webmaster" got for designing kakawa.com (not the current one), and all he had to do was pout "portals and paradigm shifts" with a flash demo in hand, and our proposal was out the window. 2 yrs later, the post-hypnotic suggestion wore off.

I think i should start writing a column on raising the standards of web dev in Nigeria, what d'ya think

Good idea larger,

make sure the article is well publicized so as to attract potential clients. For example, if u r really serious and hv a few bucks 2 throw arnd, u cd write a wkly piece 4 ur local newspaper.

just a thought

Good Idea

I am behind u guys 100%
I recently saw the inner workings of a fellow web designer. He got someone to design pages in photoshop and sliced them all up and added image maps for navigation. I was scandalized.
And this is someone that works for a web design firm. gets contracts from established organisations. the site in question was for a popular religious group.
I think pple that know the right thing should do something fast

xkape,

na so o. If to say I get money, I for don land dia since!! We have good guys there. We just need to identify and nurture them better. All in all, as with anything in life, it is like the good guys are the ones who suffer. The bad guys, probably with a better way to communicate, do crap but get all the projects, probably because they charge way less. I could do same, but I want my reputation to precede me. Of course, excellence comes at a price. I want people to look at what I have done and say "wow!!'

Zahymaka,

Interesting. Soundsultan.com was initially hosted with us at DoaminStandard.net. The webmaster picked a tiny package against all advice and good judgement. In a little while, he called to say what is wrong with your service? Why is my site not showing? After our technical guys explained to him, and adviced him to pick a package suitable for such a heavy traffic site, he merely upgraded to another meagre package. Every month he would go beyond his bandwidth and call again to complain. It was terrible. He got angry and moved. It is funny to hear that he went to repeat the same thing at 1and1. I just checked the domain now and it seems he has lost it.

Same goes for omotola.com (the movie actress's former site), I was told that it was also initially hosted with us. They picked one tiny package like that and kept complaining of our services because their sites was affected by bandwidth limits. We adviced, explained, did everything. Na lie. Eventually, it was also moved elsewhere. Eventually they lost the domain name as well.

I wonder when people will learn. It has been a bad experience with hosting celebrity websites. Where do they pick their designers from?

Let me be point blank here, I also blame web hosting firms that slice up web hosting packages to the minutest space just to get clients.

Why create plans that a client will almost always overshoot every 1 or 2 weeks?

http://www.just+web+services.com/webhostingarticle.html (remove the + sign as Seun has changed the site address to example) is an article written some years ago and even used by foreign firms on their websites to demonstrate to their clients that it does not make sense to look for hosting packages that will disappoint them.

well what do i have to say, ? but wait a minute, most Nigerians wants the best from there web designers, after all ?s what u want to have your web audience see on your sites and so on, when it comes to charges, hearing #65,000 they will say, well some 1 somewere even in short they will show me an advert from a newspaper stating design and host your website for #5,000
well just don't know what we are heading to in this nation,
well am a professional web designer am self employed i know what i got and not ready to give it 4 cheap price visit www.bolajimedia.com

fitinwell,

not to go off topic, but you are getting error 404 on http://www.bolajimedia.com/News_update.htm

also, on the contact us page, you didn't reference your email correctly - you forgot the "mailto" in your anchor tag.

I hope this helps.