Splendid Gentlemen

Here lies the epic tale of of battle: Splendid Gentlemen verses the Crooked world of Website Development.

Ta Da!

You may notice, should you find yourself reading this Blog, that the surroundings look somewhat different. The colours have been changed and there’s no longer an irritating video dancing behind the text. After several minutes of deep contemplation you may have just found yourself thinking, “Hang on one bloody second! Those Splendid Gentlemen have got themselves a new bloody website! Well, strike me down and call me an ostrich this is a nice website.” Reward yourself, you observant wonder you, for you are most indeed correct. We do have a nice, shiny, new website. But wait! If you are new to this, you’ll think, “That’s nice” and there your adventure ends my friend, but should you have found yourself on these here pages before, being thrilled and entertained by our previous volumes and Road Stories Series and consider yourself to be somewhat of a seasoned Splendette, right about now you might be thinking, “But hang on one bloody second! Didn’t you just get a New Website?! You did! You just got a new website at the end of last year! I went on it. What tomfoolery be this you lay before me?” Well, O Brothers and Sisters, this Online Virtual Temple of Splendidness and all things Splendid and Gentlemanly is our NEW New Website. Allow me to expand.

We no longer see ourselves as a band as such. Unless your the Rolling Stones being in a band involves having no money, hanging outside record companies and trying to avoid that one girl who comes to all your shows, dances over enthusiastically, knows everything you’ve ever done musically as well as the name of your first pet and the day you lost your virginity and you pray she never finds out where you live. We have had a few of them, but that is irrelevant. Stories of Bands + Women will no doubt be a feature of a future Road Stories Edition. We would rather not call ourselves a “Wedding Band” either. No, no, because the image of 50 something year olds, in matching suits, with names like “The Lovely Wedding Cake Band” or “Something Borrowed Wedding Band” or some other such wedding themed nonsense name, playing endless renditions of ‘Le Chic’ and ‘Celebrate Good Times’ makes us want to hug atom bombs, frantically pushing the ‘on’ switch. Not Splendid Gentlemen. We have now gifted ourselves the title of a ‘Successful Small Business!’ I myself used to be a Singer, but now I am Dee McLaren, Captain of Industry! I would wear a cape if I could get away with it and try to have lunch with fellow entrepreneurs like Mr. Branson, Steve Jobs, before he died obviously and the guy on the Dyson advert who’s always harping on about cyclones. [At this point I hope my sarcastic and kidding fashion comes over in text and you are not thinking, what sort of an arrogant man introduces himself as a Captain of Industry? We are truly a humble business at heart.]

Now, the television, if you were to believe such a dishonest device, would tell you that every successful business needs to have a website. How else are your valued customers supposed to know about your prised product? “Sign up today! Build your owns site!”

So, sat there, I did and I thought, “Ima get me a website. I’ll build it myself and avoid these costly website fellas.” So, on the strength of their Television advert, yours truly early signed up to Vistaprint’s web hosting service sometime back in 2011 and started to build our website. Some of you may remember our very first Dot Com. When talking about it I have become accustomed to describing it as such, “You saw our old site aye? Children with crayons could have drawn us a better site right?” I have yet to find anyone disagree with this statement.

The original SplendidGentlemen.com was a horror of epic proportions. Styled in a fashion which can best be described as “Shabby and Shite” along with our appalling Home Made Recordings and  “Mafia’s Greatest Hit’s” style photo shoot, Splendid Gentlemen birthed in to the virtual world looking like a scabby, uneducated grunt of a lass with badly made, fake designer shoes, her whole bag of make up on her face and pronouncing things like Pinot Grigio wine and Sorbet phonetically in a failed attempt to sound “classy”. What was do be our beautiful, elegant online brochure, reflecting the Gentlemanly fashion in which we saw ourselves ended up looking more like Aldo’s Fish and Chip Shop’s menu.

Fail.

Editing this virtual horror was hopeless. Logging in looked like you were formatting a word document on the first ever Apple Mac, except that nothing worked the way it should. You would have your titles centred and in bold, with the text in italics and left aligned. Hit ‘Publish’ and suddenly you’re looking at a page where everything’s in bold, on the wrong side of the page and upside down. Log back in to fix it and it looks exactly as you want it to until you hit publish again. Try and get too cocky with them and the hit you with the old, “There has been an unexpected error. Have you saved? No? Well, everything you have done over the last hour and just been deleted. Have a nice day.” I gave up with it. In 2014 our ‘Events’ page still read “Gigs coming in February 2012”. A strong willed and determined Gentleman I may be, but I was no match to the sheer level of Shite that the Vistaprint Website Editing Software was besting me with. I hung my head in defeat and let the cobwebs cover our dream of a beautiful Dot Com.

I even wrote them a letter once. Roughly, word for word it read,

“I’m not even writing to complain. I’ve just spent the last 3 hours trying to edit my website to no success due to endless errors and I just wanted you to know that you website editing software is the worst piece of crap I’ve ever had the misfortune of coming across in my life. I hope you’re day is going as badly as mine is.”

They declined to comment back. So I binned them.

What they don’t tell you is though, when you register a website with them, those sly little dogs don’t give you the name you’ve paid for. No, that would be too simple and bad for repeat business. Those cunning little nest of vipers take it out for you, register it with their company and very kindly let you use it, kind souls that they are. So they owned the Dot Com and there was no hope of us using it unless we paid them a ‘release fee’, which we weren’t doing as they’d already taken quite enough of our moolah.

So a new website had to be made. We went with the Dot Co Dot Uk and started talking with a ‘web designer’. Now this may just be my personal and unfortunate circumstances leading to an overly harsh and sweeping generalisation, but the world of web design seems to be populated with 90% lying arse bags. Maybe overly harsh, but from experience: Bastards! Bastards everywhere!

*This Sweeping Generalisation Excludes the lovely people at Soapbox Media who, as the story unfolds will sweep in as the heroes of the day. Read on to find out how.

Web Guy 1: Captain Davie King of Google, Show Worker Extraordinaire and Lawyer to the Stars

Our first ‘Web Guy’ was Big Davie. Everyone knows one. He was going to build us a website, originally for a fee, but later for nothing because “he liked the band and wanted to help in our progress.” Never one to turn down a freebie, I graciously accepted. He typed a few words in to Google and was able to show out on 99 billion results, there was his sites hitting the number one, two and three spots on google searches. Seemed legit. This fella knew his stuff. Now, me not being tech savvy in the slightest thought I had found a Golden Goose willing to work for the occasional pint. Should you type anything in to Google even remotely related to the wedding industry, there we would be, sat at the top of the search, crowned Kings of Googley bits and champions of the Wedding Industry. My Captain of Industry mouth frothed, my mind raced and my Business Brain imagined all the extra business that would come in as a result of this Genius of Google. I tightened a notch on my belt as my wallet already felt like it was filling up at such an alarming rate and the weight of it in my pocket was going to pull my trousers to my ankles, causing somewhat of an awkward scene as Big Dave had a second job in a shop and that was where we were having said conversation and the other customers were just not life ready for the paleness of my legs and my black, completely unremarkable, Next Menswear boxer shorts.

That was until weeks passed and no progress was made on the site. I’d call him up and get all manner of excuses. It seemed, were I to distill all our phone conversations down to a simple day that he had so many clients he was working 23.57 hours per day and getting a solid 3 seconds of sleep per night. “He’s busy”, I thought to myself, “and he’s doing it for free, so I’ll just wait…But if he’s so busy, why does he need the second job working the shop?” It was fishy indeed. Detective hat on, I asked around.

“Bolloks!” a friend of mine spat at me, “I work in that pub 5 nights a week and he’s in there every night I work.” “I met him on the train one day and he was telling a girl next to him he was a lawyer.” another said. The picture seemed rather clear then. As it turns out, the Google ranking thing is a cheap parlour trick showing more what you frequently search for rather than how you rank. I tried it on my own computer at home and he wasn’t even coming up first for his own company. My sheer ignorance of all things technical had led me skipping down the garden path behind a singing Pied Piper only to skip right on to the mud heap behind the line of flowers masking is. Now isn’t that a bloody metaphor and a half. Well and truly duped, hoodwinked and laid out to dry I went back to the drawing board. Thankfully only £5.96 of damage done.

Web Guy 2: Mr. Amicable, All Promises and Wont See You Without a Free Pen 

Fed up with freelance time wasters, Attempt Number 2 was with a reputable Glasgow company. That was when I came across a Mr. Eddie Doyle. Now you may think it is incredibly harsh of me to post this mans full name online, but this is kind of like the Splendid Gentlemen version of that TV show Cowboy Builders, so hold with me and I will expand.

I called up and explained how we had been let down by the other fella and began to enquire as to how much a new website would cost. I had already bought the domain name and a ‘website template’ under the guidance of Old Davey King of Google, Shop worker Extraordinaire and part time Lawyer to the Stars and just needed someone to populate it. “Well, a new website will probably cost you, starting price of £2500, mate.” I was told, “But I understand your business seems like it needs a website and I feel bad you have been messed around. I tell you what, you seem like a sound guy. I have a guy works with us, I’ll put you on to him and we’ll do the whole thing for £250. How does that sound?”  Derailed by the sheer kindness and swayed well and truly to the compliments paid to my good character, of which I am most proud, I cast all misgivings aside, Captain of Industry Brain again awash with the sweet euphoria of fame and fortune I fought back the urges to scream, “Just take my f*cking money! TAAAKKEEE ITTTT!” I politely awarded this seeming Gentleman with the patronage of my business.

After a few meetings to talk through what we wanted, we handed over the log in details, paid the money asked and were told it would be done in one week. One and a half months later we had our site….ish.

We will call their method of production: Chinese Whispers in Polish when you don’t actually speak any other language than English.

Eddie had a pal, another David, from Poland, who’s English wasn’t great, so I was to email Eddie what I wanted, who would pass it on to David, who would do it, email Eddie, who would then email yours truly. See how there’s room for error here? I would email jobs 1-5 to be done. 3 days later jobs 1-3 would be done, but not 4-5. So I would email to say that 4-5 would need done, but now also 6-8 would need done again. 3 days and jobs 4-6 would be done, but not 7-8. And so it went on, and on, and on, with David frequently disappearing off the radar for days and Eddie unable to reach him. Eventually we got there and launched the site, which was what your good selves saw and for a while all hunky dory. We were Captains of the Online World about to boost our business to epic new proportions, leaving our competitors in the dust.

Our next problems started when we realised that the site wasn’t showing up on Google search results at all. What use was a site if no one could find it? So after Eddie cancelling on 5 meetings in a row, dodging my calls, ignoring my emails and shooting my fastest and most beloved carrier pigeon clean out the sky with a Blunderbuss, on the 6th attempt we met. He bought me a coffee and gave me a free pen as an apology for cancelling 5 times previously. He’s all heart people. But after the quickness that the pen ran out of ink after being gifted it, my more cynical side is starting to believe it was just one of the pens he happened to have on him that day. For £250 they would do a one off set up, clearing everything out of the site and making sure everything worked as it should to rank on Google. Ongoing from there, for £250 a month they would do ongoing maintenance on our site to make sure that in 6 months it would be ranking properly, at the top of the Google mountain.

The initial £250 was paid and the site was, so I believed all cleaned up and I was given a report of the breakdown of all the things they’d done. Seemed fairly conclusive. The first instalment of the monthly payments was paid the following month and over the next 2 months, no visible changes were made to the site, David and Eddie were both hard to get hold of and I was starting to get a little ratty with it all.

One bright and crisp morning in October I awoke to a lovely email from Google Inc. to tell me that they had detected our site was a host for Malware, had been removed from all Google searches and would come with a warning for anyone who tried to enter that it could “Potentially harm your computer”. Now any Captain of Industry knows this is a disaster for business. What’s more was that it was just a few weeks before we were due to appear at the SECC Scottish Wedding Show where we would be hanging out flyers to thousands of potential customers directing them to our beautiful, new online palace of Splendid things. Disaster!

I was a machine of angry texts, emails, phone calls and voicemails to both Eddie and David. Eventually Eddie got back to me assuring that it would be fixed within 24 hours. Several weeks later, and one day before the SECC show, after having the site pulled offline for a full week, deleted and re uploaded form a back up [probably deleting all the bug fixes the previous £500 had paid for] the site was back online, cleared of any malware and checked and approved by Google.

After this Eddie became increasingly difficult to reach. I called his company to be told that he no longer worked there and all our work had not officially been put through their books. It had all been considered Freelance and all the jobs already paid for which were left outstanding were not the responsibility of the company and I would have to chase Eddie up personally to have them completed. That would have been great if he hadn’t changed his number, blocked me on Facebook and moved to London. Over the coming weeks parts of the site began to glitch and drop of in functionality. Pictures disappeared at random, the contact form just one day bugged out for some reason and never worked again and some Firewalls in offices were blocking our site due to the Malware Scare. I just wanted away from both Evasive Eddie and Disaster David.

Web Guy 3: The Legends, The Heroes, The True Professionals who make up the staff of SoapBox Media.

Worrying about the future implications to the business of having those two have anything to do with our website I approached the very friendly people a Soapbox Digital Media. They have stores on the high street so clients can walk in and they can be reached at any time. I explained my dilemma and they told me it was a common occurrence in the industry. We talked through the needs and requirements of the site, the previous problems we’d had, they took me through a full design brief, were open and honest about the costs and exactly where the money was going and were thoroughly nice guys to boot. They even gave us a detailed breakdown of the site as it was, highlighting that Eddie and David, aside from the £250 to build the initial site, had literally run off with the remaining £500 without doing a shred of work and the back end, technical foundations were weak and badly designed, thus the reason for everything bugging out at random intervals.

Soapbox originally gave me a 6 week estimation of build time and managed to complete the job in 3-4. Our website now reflects our philosophy and branding and I’m a happy man indeed with this Gentlemen Temple. It has a solid build foundation and is more than adequate to meet all the needs of our busy and bustling Wedding Band Business. Please feel free to browse these halls of Gentlemanly Information free from Malware, Free from things not working properly, Free from was we Gentlemen of a Glaswegian Persuasion call Bawbags and Free to furnish yourself with all the information you need to make an informed and weighted decision on whether you would like we three Gentlemen to appear on your wedding day. We promise we are much better at playing musical instruments than we are at the tech stuff. We wont let you down. Our names are not Eddie or David and we have never worked in the “Web Industry”.

I guess the moral of the story, oh Brothers and Sisters is you get what you pay for. Our free or discounted builds may have seemed appealing at the time, but in the long run there is always a catch. We hope you enjoy our shiny, new Splendid Gentlemen Website.