RyanSMcFadyen

Most of the time your scraping won't be a bother. Either they won't know it's happening or won't care because they think being added to a directory is a good thing. but, any kind of rejection is going to harm your site in some way. - A small brand blocking you without you noticing quickly results in dated information in your database. - A small brand blocking you AND requesting removal of all their data causes the above as well as time spent AND a small loss in your appeal (What good is a comparison site that doesn't compare all the things?) - A small brand blocking, requesting removal and taking action does all of the above AND costs you money. - A large brand just blocking you causes all of the above. People can deal with going to a toy comparison website and not finding Dave-Makes-Toys-In-His-Shed LTD. What they won't put up with is a toy comparison website with no Fischer Price on it. - A large brand taking an active interest in blocking you can result in all sorts, such as Mike mentioned. Someone with enough lawyer clout could get your hosting or domain suspended because ultimately scraping content without permission is illegal, it's just frequently ignored because it usually comes with an upside. Large brands are more likely to take issue and action because A.) They aren't desparate for attention, B.) They are much more forceful about their copyright, C.) They are much more likely to have official partnerships in place for that sort of thing and D.) They are more likely to notice/know what you are doing.

Free speech. I can write about any product I want to. It's fair criticism. Directories on the other hand automatically index massive amounts of information for no purpose other than to shift consumer focus away from the business' individual sites and on to the directory, for monetary gain. Here's an analogy. You paint a lovely picture. You put it into your gallery, with all your other paintings and your hope is that the new painting will either attract a buyer for itself or the people who come to see it will browse around and maybe buy one of your other paintings. I turn up at your gallery. I take a picture of all your paintings, I go home and I put them on my website. I've done this quite a lot, I have a fair few artists on there and I encourage people not to visit your gallery but instead to do their browsing on my website. If they see something they like I tell them exactly where it is and how much it costs. Now, if I'm super popular and many many more people are visiting my website than are visiting your gallery.. this could be a good thing for you. It's exposure, your work is reaching a greater number of people than it normally would. If however you pride yourself on your gallery, you've spent a great deal of effort, time and money on building your gallery and you rely quiet heavily on not just selling paintings but little bits and bobs at the gallery gift shop you might not like me making money off of the browsing these people would normally be doing in your gallery. Or maybe you are very particular about the way your paintings are displayed and the information that is displayed alongside them. Or maybe you are a very famous artists, you are the number one name people search for on my website but you simply don't like the idea that your work is being used to draw attention to all the less-famous artists that show up alongside you on my website. Or maybe you are old and don't understand the internet. Or maybe you already started a website with some artist friends because you saw the opportunity a single directory might give to everyone involve but you also saw that if you ran the directory you could give fairer terms to all artists. Or maybe you don't have a reason. It's your art, you can do what you like with it. ..... In this hypothetical situation, would it be within your rights to stop me taking photographs of your painting?

It is not your data. What they do with it elsewhere is not your concern, you need express permission to use it for your own commercial purposes even if those purposes are to direct customers to them. Scraping data is increasing load on their servers when you aren't a customer and thus not potentially resulting in a sale. In many cases this is ignored because there is commercial benefit to allowing it somewhere down the line. Google Search is usually allowed to scrape because it translates directly into better visibility on Google. Adsense is generally allowed to scrape because the more data it has the more relevant the advertisements are and that should increase click rate which increases revenues. Google has also proven itself to be an ethical data scraper. They reduce load as much as possible, they grant you some level of control and access to the scraper and they won't go anywhere you tell them not to (robots.txt) But if the company in question sees no benefit to you scraping their data or has some kind of commercial model that is in opposition to you having that data they are perfectly within their rights to block you. Heck they are perfectly within their rights to block you for no reason at-all. Example, you don't find Flickr image results on Google images. Flickr is owned by Yahoo! and they think that the Flickr data is too valuable to allow it's competitors access to. Who's the biggest company who's data you will be scraping? What if somewhere in their corporate structure they own a directory/comparison type site that deals with the same data. It's well within their interests to deny you that information.

When it comes to web/software startups you are shooting yourself in the foot by keeping your idea close to your chest. Yes, many people on this forum have the skills to duplicate whatever it is you are doing and I understand the fear that you'll get caught out but it's simply not realistic. For a start most of us are pretty busy and any ground-up site like this is a large time investment. Secondly, it is execution and luck that matters. I can say with certainty that your idea is not unique, what will separate you is your ability to spot where improvements can be made, making those improvements and getting the right set of influential people to see, understand and promote those improvements. Facebook was not a new idea. We've had social meeting places since the dawn of humanity. It was better though. Understandably, provably and usefully better and Mark Zuckerberg had the good fortune to have a little insight into a world that could spark the initial spread. My inclination is that you are making a takeaway food directory, like Just-Eat and if I am right data-scraping is the worst way to go about making that a success.

Then you need $65.

*looks over from behind RD's shoulder*. Yeah, you heard! *points*

Using templates for business websites is a fundamental conflict of models and the the exception of just needing a quick & cheap client through your books, it should be avoided at all costs. Your average business should be focusing on USP. They should be doing everything they can to convince customers they aren't like all the other options, they are better, they are cleverer, faster, cheaper... whatever. Templates on the other hand use the opposite model. They are designed to be sold in bulk and they will be sold in bulk to who? Your clients competitors.

You need a certain number of likes before it lets you choose a vanity URL for pages. Facebook -> Use Facebook as [Your Business Page] -> Edit Page -> Update Info -> Basic Information -> Username

I have 8 hours off every night.

Backstretch http://srobbin.com/jquery-plugins/backstretch/ is the best I've seen for doing this. The CSS cover method is nice but some browsers can lag because of it.

I'd ditch the QR code entirely, just increase web address size and put that in the middle instead.

Yes it's dated, but the good news is it's a relatively easy fix. Mainly what makes it look dated is what I like to call 'effects'. Things that are added to elements in an attempt to give them some depth, distance, separation etc. They need to be incredibly carefully used to work well. For your site I would ; Remove underline from links Reduce header font sizes a little bit, add some spacing Remove the border, background, drop shadow and inner shadow from various content boxes. Give the whole sidebar a background colour. Not everything needs its own box. White space can be enough of a separator. Let the content be the main attraction, don't box it in and segregate it from other bits of content. Font-sizes, bolding and placement are much better at keeping stuff apart but also keeping a flow to the site.

Good idea if you can pull it off and deliver with actually useful content. Signed up.

Fine here too..

I can't speak for Facebook but the Twitter API will respond to everything you send it and will tell you if what you tried to do was successful. https://dev.twitter.com/docs/error-codes-responses

All you need is a plan. Go through his current site and find out how it's laid out, what kind of content he posts, what kind of plugins he uses etc. That'll be your 'must do this' list. I'm talking about things like polls, image galleries, reviews.. whatever. He'll have his way of using it. Then you want to set up a local copy of Wordpress. Fill it with some dummy content (Make sure you've got one of each of the 'must do this' in there). Crack on with your design. Code up your design on the dummy wordpress. Once you are happy with it upload it to his site and turn it on. Bosh! If you've planned and checked properly it should go fairly smoothly.

Drupal.

http://pages.ebay.com/announcements/new/index.html Basically they have changed the font and half fixed the kerning. I think the page though is an excellent example of when a designer is getting paid far too much and feels the need to spend most of their time writing guff that sort of might relate to the new logo to justify their rate. Apparently it's uniform to represent modern easy to use eBay, it's touching to represent the connected community and it's rooted in their proud history. All the while representing their dynamic future. (because in bull**** land uniform and dynamic aren't actually opposites!)

The idea you'll gain some kind of notoriety by winning is absolute horse**** in my opinion. If you win you will be labelled "competition winner" and that instantly destroys any chance you had at picking up work from it. People won't assume you are a real designer who gets paid, they'll think your Joe Schmoe the Brickie who loves Kiwanuka and happened to put together a great poster. He's abusing his level of fame to get people to agree to terms they otherwise wouldn't. It's more offensive than any registered user of 99Designs could ever be.

Closed Beta is here! Few folk are in noodling around, doing their best to break it and shout at me for forgetting really obvious things. As they are supposed to. If you dropped your email into the box on the pre-launch website you should have received a beta key in your inbox. If didn't you can still get in and have a look, have some influence on what tender.li will be when it launches. Just reply here or PM me and I'll set you up an account.

Just to be clear, all you would want is a Photoshop file of a finished design? Not HTML/PHP/jQuery etc?

I feel kind of sorry for the Vimeo guys in this situation. If you google the problem you'll find a fair few posts on their forums about it and in almost everyone they have the same excuse. They keep changing the message and every time they do somebody gets offended and they need to change it again. I think that perhaps the poor devs have just given up.

You could but I feel like you should be upfront with the client if you do. For two main reasons. 1.) They should be aware that they are being used as practice. This perhaps won't help land the client but it's only professional to properly inform them of what they are getting. That particular poster/whatever they need might be really important and even though they would go for the 50% in other cases.. not on this job. 2.) By not telling them you are charging 50%, and for this reason.. you are laying a trap for yourself. What happens 5 jobs in with this client, when you have had the practice and you feel ready to charge your normal rate. Do you double this clients rates overnight (If he asks why you can might have to reveal you've been practicing on him all this time) or do you keep this single client at the low rate and take new clients on at the full rate? It's not an impossible hurdle but I think you have to find the right client who in normal conditions wouldn't be a great client. One who cares enough about money off that he'll risk subpar work.

Yeah, G'luck with that. It's only the internet, the best tool ever invented for instant, easy, automated actions and duplication of data. It's only what the damn thing is for.

<3 I would be @idiot's man servant if he let me.