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. :)
Posted on December 7th, 2009 by Climie
Filed under: Wall of Shame
Thanks for the tips!
I wish I would have thought of this! You know, with google image search I don’t even have to take my own pictures any more!
Cheers,
Zack
THANK you Marc for teaching us this invaluable lesson! Building a website can be so time consuming! And the creativity and critical thinking required to start from scratch is very intimidating.
Thank you for providing this easy 4 step solution, so we can all get back to the craft we revere so much.
I LOVE that he can’t even spell Photography in the copyright statement…
I like the new design better
this guy is definitely slow or thick-skinned…it’s still up !
Marc, how did you find out that he had done this? What a punk.
How did you realize this was going on?
This is so full of awesome. I’m doing it right now! But instead of white I might try to put some red in – or maybe use Times New Roman for my font, I think it is cutting edge.
reminds me of the Microsoft Store!
Sara – I left a little hint in the first step. They uploaded and actually clicked on of my hotlinks, which hit my referrer stats immediately, and I started snapping from there.
I was going to try something similar with flickr slideshow RSS. I can’t wait to try this one though. Maybe I can go a step further a mashup my favorite photogs sites.
But how would you strip the watermark if there is one
I’m in the market for a new site. this seems like the cheapest option fo sho. maybe i can borrow his photos for my new flower power marketing campaign.
Thank you for this great tutorial. We have been working on a brand new website for over a month and still haven’t finished it. Now you’re telling me I can just copy one in a few hours? Maybe I’ll copy Marc McLaughlin’s. HA!
Let me know if you need to borrow a baseball bat or anything.
Marc’s email address is introspect@marcmclaughlin.com go ahead and let him know what you think. I’ve already sent my thoughts off to him.
I can see how this is blatant and how you would be a little upset but I would say most photographers get ideas from others. Take wedding photographers for example. How many times have you seen pretty much the same shots over and over between different photographers?
I am not making excuses but am saying maybe you should be a little flattered!
Well, I might be way off!
What a shame. It looks like his cool new original site is down.
A DMCA takedown notice issued to both him and his webhost might be in order.
Jason – this would be the equivalent of actually taking another photographers photo off their website and posting it to yours. Had they come up with their own graphics based on my site, it’s not big deal. It’s just a white box, not the first, not the last. But they can make their own I’d think.
Wow! This is so much easier with the step-by-step tutorial. Thanks for the tips! (Oh, and Google image search might be too obvious. Try grabbing thumbnails from stock photo agencies or Flickr. Maybe they won’t notice as much. Or as quickly.)
Eesh.
Fair enough, just trying to cut the poor guy some slack!
I do know photogs emulate each other, even websites. I am guilty myself I am sure, well not with the website thing. It is how we learn.
Again, I am not trying to make excuse for this guy, and it is freaking funny to see it as its happening!
I am sure he is getting a eye full via email as we type!
That’s so jacked up. Many people wouldn’t have spotted it, though – so I guess that’s what he was counting on. Well handled.
What he may not realize is that everything he does will now be scrutinized very closely. And forget about asking for help from anyone who has seen this.
Nice catch, though. I always tell my kids that crooks just think they’re smarter than the rest of us, but if they were, they could make it happen honestly instead of lyin’ and thievin’
Here i’ve been dancing around open source projects forever when Clime+co had open source right in front of me.
I certainly feel that mob rule applies here since Marc has clearly indicated there are no rules to govern this sort of thing. Like rules in a knife fight.
wow. sweet.
JASON – um, no sir. no slack for this guy. it’s one thing to say, “i love brad pitt’s style, i’m going to the store and buying every single thing he ever wears, putting them into the same combinations.” its quite another thing to say “i LOVE brad pitt’s style, i’m going to break into his house and STEAL that idiot’s clothes!”
they are his. clothes.
also, marc, you like how i made you brad pitt in the analogy?
photogs definitely emulate one another, and yes, many just plain rip off the same ideas. but at least they took the image with their own camera. they lack creativity, but have broken no laws. (although i think some people would disagree. see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bird_Girl )
This posting was timely! I was racking my brain trying to come up with a new site.
No need to worry any more!
Holy crap. That’s pretty much the lamest thing I’ve ever seen. Don’t be surprised if you get one of those “What did you do with your photos? I was using them for my website.” e-mails from this guy. Incredible.
You mean, instead of bothering to take the time to teach myself Flash and building my own flash gallery from scratch, I could have just ripped off someone else’s? Damn! If only I’d known that a month ago!
/end sarcasm
It’s scary to think that there are photographers out there who try to sell themselves as ‘creatives’ yet can’t even come up with their own unique image.
It’s nice to see that Marc has since taken down the ripped off website and replaced it with 4 of the most ordinary photos I’ve ever seen. One of them actually makes me want to take to my eyes with a fork.
Good luck to Marc with his future endeavours.
Seriously the best blog post I have read in a while.
seriously?
wow.
…just wow!
What I love is that if you google him, the “snippets” left on the “about” & “gallery” pages (that are no longer up…) say “Finding new and creative ways to capture the essence of a picture”… and “Copyright © Marc McLaughlin designed by marc.” Well, at least he got the last part right!
Oh, and love the misspelling, too! Ha!
There are no excuses for this when there are free site and inexpensive photo sites templates on the web. One thing is inspiration and another is stealing work. If you don’t have the work to show go shoot! And you can’t blame a Web Designer because you should say “Hey those aren’t my images!” It’s just sad that people are too lazy to put a little time into doing itthe right way. I’ll leave it at that.
Great job calling this person out Climie!
WOW, If you could post a video podcast it would be perfect. It’s taking me a year to develop a new website, but this would be much faster. It’s a share that I didn’t think of this before.
-bp
I can’t even wrap my mind around the thought process that anyone could think this is okay. It’s obvious the guy can’t make his own site and the images that are there now, I wonder who he stole those from as well since I wouldn’t expect that they are his.
just, wow. [shaking head].