I should know… I’m one of them.
Anyway, about a year ago, a friend of mine (known here as Label Honch) roped me into helping him set up a pseudo-record label that would function as an online vendor for underground/experimental artists hawking CDs they’ve had pressed through a specific on-demand duplicator. Mostly because I run a fairly successful local webzine and I’m the only guy he knows who knows a little PHP.
Now, I’ve known this guy for years, we’re good friends and all. He moved to Chicago a couple of years back, but I sit in on harp whenever he plays a show in town. Great musician, nice guy, etc etc.
Two problems: 1) We, and all the artists on his label, are all complete flakes, and 2) He knows nothing about web design, scripting, or e-commerce in general.
So from about December 01 through May 02, I designed the site, pretty well got the basic shopping cart that I wrote from scratch to talk to the duplicator’s system, updated the site a few times as Honch recruited about a dozen bands into his project, and then…
…nothing.
The site has been sitting on the host for six months with nothing to sell.
Fast forward to last week, and LH sends me an email telling me that some band (who were never one of the group of artists that he recruited in the first place) were going to be having a release show on Tuesday (last night) and could I please get everything up and working so fans could order from the site this morning?
Well, fuck, dude, I don’t know if I can. I’ve been working on this in my free time. You’ve been out talking up the label, getting free demos, and drinking beer, while I’ve been trying to crib enough PHP to get the cart to work for hours on end. I haven’t even looked at the goddam code for four fucking months… it’s not like I can suddently just pick up from where I left off and turn a button. Yeah, people do this shit under deadlines all the time, but they usually get paid money for it.
I mean, I love the guy dearly and all, but I’m about at the point where I want to delete the custom portal I built, install PHP-Nuke, point him to the admin login, and say: “Build your own damn website.”
So I’ve been passive-agressively working on the site for a few minutes at a time, when it suits me. Never ever ever ever ever again will I help a friend who knows nothing about web design set up a site, especially anythingg music-related. Advice? Glad to give it. But actual work? No fucking way.
