Tutorial: How to steal a website and make it yours.
Hey kids! You’re going to learn, step by step, how to steal a website today! So you have your passion, but you’re just kinda lazy, and you need a clean new website, and you need it FAST. What do you do? Well, if you’re Marc McLaughlin Photography, you just boost one you like, gif for gif! Here we go, step by step!
Step 1 (above): Just swipe everything you want. The work is already done! How cool is that? But first upload it so that it doesn’t come up publicly. Something like index_test.html would work. But wait… ohhhh no you didn’t! Don’t click the original photographer’s hot links! You might get busted, like immediately. Bummer! Oh well. But definitely don’t forget those bottom two corner gifs. That could look kind of weird.
Step 2 (below): Ok, you got all those pesky gifs. Stupid original photographer could at least have a zip file on their website with all the files included so you wouldn’t have to go through all this. Now that it’s all together, let’s just throw it up as your public site. Does it matter that it has someone else’s name and contact info? Not really, because step three is going to go really quick! Oh, and make sure to put a copyright statement under your new site. You wouldn’t want anyone to steal any of your stuff now, would you?
Step 3: Time to take care of pesky details, like the identity of the photographer you stole it from. There, all better! Deleting those went quick enough, so clients visiting your site will be all “Oh wow, he must be working on a new site, so exciting!”
Step 4: Make it legit! With all the extra time you saved not having to draw your own box in Photoshop, you can do just what Marc McLaughlin did and drop your name, phone and email on the old graphic and drop it right back in. Don’t worry about fonts that clash, text that is too long, or whether your new menu overhangs the left of the beautiful, rounded-corner box you just took possession of. Let’s hope your menu options mesh perfectly with what’s already been created, because that would be even MORE work! Ugh! Who wants that? Besides, Arial is such a rare font to get a hold of, so let’s not mess with this too much. Just shoehorn your business presentation into someone the structure of the one you stole from. That’s way easier.
That’s it, 4 easy steps! Now go out there and get what’s yours! Ethics are for punks.
ETA: Ok, I feel the need to clarify what’s the big deal since this has gotten so much interest. I’d like to address a couple of points that usually come up when things like this happen to other photographers and myself.
The first is that imitation is flattery. Fine, but imitation is taking something you see and making your own and trying to make it better, not physically taking someone else’s work and passing it off as yours. This is not a major infraction like stealing images is, but to me it’s symptomatic of a larger problem. So many people think that if it’s on the internet and can be had, it’s theirs, and that’s just wrong and lazy. Certainly my site is not the first white box nor will it be the last. Mine is inspired from one of the numerous commercial portfolios out there. But I made my own from ground up and for my purposes. I didn’t swipe another photographer’s site code to make it. It’s 100% mine.
The second thing that usually comes up is that the victim should take this to the person who stole privately. Nonsense. Know what comes of that? Some excuse about “my web designer did it” (or other nonsense excuses) and/or defensiveness and/or varying degrees of compliance, and of course sometimes even shifting blame in the other direction. Nobody calls or emails me privately before they publicly jack my site, so I feel no duty to offer the same courtesy. Yes it happens a lot and no, nothing you can do to stop it, but I’m not going to ignore it. I’m even going to have a little fun with it. :)
About this entry
You’re currently reading “Tutorial: How to steal a website and make it yours.,” an entry on Atlanta Wedding Photographers, Climie + Co News
- Published:
- 12.07.09 / 3pm
- Category:
- Wall of Shame
- Navigate: « « Congrats, Anandi & Chandan! Atlanta History Center « « | » » Traveling Mentor: Formal announcement! » »
34 Comments
Jump to comment form | comments rss [?] | trackback uri [?]