Web designers to avoid: The Geek

Likely to say: “We’ve just moved to ZorbServeMAXX 5.0.7.19RC2!!1!1″

Previous Offences: Telephone helpdesk. Network installations. Overclocking. LAN Parties. Case modding. Aerosmith. Warez.

Will ruin your project by: continually pushing the server’s software one version ahead of your site’s code.

The Geek is a sysadmin at heart and he designs websites as a means to an end: testing new software on his server. Stable software is for girls. The good stuff has more patches than an audience participation production of the Pirates of Penzance. It matters little to the Geek that your site only exists to sell your minicab services to customers within five miles of Morden. He’ll pull out all the stops to ensure that it scales to two million visitors per month before he’ll even consider launching.

Fortunately, the Geek has a friend who works in a hosting company (in fact, all his friends work in hosting companies) who can get a good deal on just the kind of “big iron” that’d be absolutely perfect for your site. Despite this unexpected advantage, your hosting bill comes to six times what he’s charging for the web design itself, and that’s just for the first month.

Still, if your business ever gets featured simultaneously on all five national TV channels you’ll be able to handle the spike, even if the design looks suspiciously similar to the wiki-based documentation for the Geek’s server hardware. Odd, that.

Nine months after launch, your inbox still bulges with hourly reports on load averages, server uptime and critical security advisory notices that the Geek just can’t bear to keep to himself.