I am sure most website designers and developers hate the thought of picking up older projects which have been badly built, designed and marketed by older colleagues!
Well that has been the case for me on more than one occasion, and sadly when you try to show them the light, all that happens is that you create a bigger mess! I was unfortunte enough to pick up the following site some years back (probably about 6 years thinking about it) http://www.notcutts.co.uk - Notcutts the company is a well established local brand from where I am from in the UK. They specialize in gardening and the sale of plants, however sadly that seems to be where their unique speciality ends 
What was more sad was the relationship Notcutts had with the previous web designer, I won’t name names, but all I can say is thank the lord this person is no longer producing trash for the web. Because they were so tight with the client, the client took everyone of their words as being gospel, yet all this person had, was a basic concept of HTML, no other programming languages, no search engine knowledge, no design skills and certainly no clue as to what a website should be!
When I picked up the notcutts website, it was already using technologies I considered outdated, namely frames. Frames that fantastic relic from the web of old, a technology which looked impressive but had more flaws than the document describing the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Then of course there is the actual design of the site! I mean the site starts with the following quote “Excellence in Gardening since 1897″ but surely having a website design that pre-dates this is just too painful. What makes this so much sadder, is that I had stopped using frames when I inherited this website, yet the person then maintaining it was still proactively using frames as the technical solution of choice.
It is sad to see that long after I was involved in this technically dire excuse of a website, nothing has been done to truly release its potential. Do I blame Notcutts? Sort of, are they badly advised? Most probably! Sadly when money changes hands, it is easy for an external company to tell them what they want to hear, rather than what they need to be told, and quite frankly I think the mentality or ego of some of their staff couldn’t handle the truths about how shocking their site was/is.
This site was originally built around the pre-2000 era, when most of us were still coming to grips with windows 98! As such they were never educated about the benefits of the web, what a content management system is, what problems frames create, especially for search engines. I know when I tried to implement innovative ways with which to free up some of their budget it only landed me with a slap on the wrist from the boss, so as a way of saying thanks Notcutts, I would like to formally present you with a virtual award for having one of the technologically worst websites I have ever had the displeasure of working on.
Considering how well advanced some of their competition is, I find it sad that no real investment has been made to actually take their current website and create a truly unique online experience for their users. They could build a massive educational resource, which potentially could tie into a great ecommerce site. Not to mention actually building a list of email newsletter subscribers. Every company needs to move with the times, and embrace technology that will help their business. Sadly this website is 10 years past a makeover and I can only hope that a well established and respected company such as this might pull their finger out and get something happening!
However I guess there may be a little glimmer of light at the end of the proverbial tunnel, their sister site http://www.notcutts-design.co.uk/ looks a little nicer, and has been updated since my association ended. However I can see glaringly obvious problems with this site that can’t bring myself to go into!
