John De Mott - "Drupal Pro - Freelance Programmer / Developer, United States"

MY DRUPAL NIGHTMARE I hired a company in Poland to build my "dream site" using Drupal. Seven months and $6,000 later, my dream had become a nightmare.  The product they delivered was unusable, riddled with holes, bugs, security flaws, and grammatical errors.  It became clear from their emails that they never understood what I wanted in the first place. They seemed incredulous that I wasn't happy with what they delivered -- but they always promised they would fix it....in just a few more...

MY DRUPAL NIGHTMARE

I hired a company in Poland to build my "dream site" using Drupal. Seven months and $6,000 later, my dream had become a nightmare.  The product they delivered was unusable, riddled with holes, bugs, security flaws, and grammatical errors.  It became clear from their emails that they never understood what I wanted in the first place. They seemed incredulous that I wasn't happy with what they delivered -- but they always promised they would fix it....in just a few more weeks.  After having spent so much time and money on the project I was eager to believe them, but it quickly became clear they were never going to deliver a usable product.  Worse than the lost money and lost time was the devastating blow to my organization's credibility.  

In the previous year, we had had a meteoric rise, from a small start-up non-profit, to a serious force for advocacy with over 60,000 registered supporters all over the country and world.  We had delivered over 10,000 letters asking the US Senate to take action in Darfur and collected over 80,000 petition signatures to the White House.  Using low cost / high impact viral marketing techniques, I was able to reach 100,000's of people across the world. The new site was going to captalize on these gains by creating a robust social network where our supporters could log in, make friends, and run their own advocacy campaigns.  And then I picked the wrong developer...

Out of money and out of patience, I returned to my background in computer science and started writing the code myself.  I came to understand what seperates a Drupal specialist from someone with expertise in PHP/Drupal/Joomla/Ruby/anything-you-will-pay-me-for. I learned how Drupal development is an art in its own - How even expert PHP programmers can make mistakes in Drupal that will cost you time, money, and reduce the quality of your site.  Taking Drupal development headon, I practiced Drupal tutorials, downloaded podcasts, and wore out the binding of my copy of Pro Drupal Development.  Now I'm making a career as a professional Drupal developer and consultant and I particularly enjoy working with socially conscious organizations and non-profits interested in implementing viral marketing strategies.

What I can offer your organization:

• A website stays fast and secure - Inexperienced Drupal developers can damage your site, introducing bugs, server lag, and gaping security holes that will cost you much more in the long run.  Any changes I make will be modular and inline with community best practices.

• Less billable hours - I use Drupal's vast store of contributed modules whenever possible  This means less billable hours because we aren't re-inventing the wheel.

• Marketing focus -  I know what it takes to drive traffic, sell products, launch successful viral campaigns, and optimize pages for conversion.  This is a skill-set few Drupal developers bring to the table.

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