Getting to No
alistapart.com
alistapart.com
Technically incompetent, yet forcing technical decisions. The one whose motto is "This is what I requested, but not what I need. It is your fault." No amount of signed requirements will protect you from getting the blame.
Not only do these two points contradict each other, my advice for web guys getting into the game is to take the advice of the latter recommendation. Small business owners hate contracts and don't want to see every detail spelled out. They see it as a trap, and will think of you as someone who's just looking for a reason to upcharge.
Your contracts should be just specific enough to make the client think you've thought of most everything, and include enough wiggle room if things get hairy, but shouldn't spell out every single little item. And stay the hell away from your attorney when composing this, they only make it worse and of course will charge you an assload for their work.
If your game is medium sized businesses or any corporate work, sure go ahead and write up that bulletproof contact. That's stuff corp and enterprise love to see so they can justify the expense to their higher ups ("look at this 20 page contact boss, it covers everything!").
WHAT!? 6 Months for a website!? HOLY MOLY! I thought taking 3 weeks to get a static site up was bad!
I think you can be pretty sure that they're not talking about 2-3 page static web brochures. Also, keep in mind that part of their desired lifestyle is NOT "drinking schnapps to get through the day or grinding your teeth at night", which is the sort of thing that you get when rushing day and night to build a full-featured system in a couple weeks.
Seriously, can you honestly point to any sites that have not a hair over 21 consecutive days to build in their entirety and match the breadth of features, design quality, testing, iterating with the customer, etc, that would be expected of a typical Happy Cog project -- and yet somehow still have a reasonably healthy lifestyle?
To me it sounds like a variation on the "I can build this in a weekend" HN meme.
[EDIT]: mind you, I will agree that I've seen plenty of good systems built in under 6 months, just not 2-3 weeks :)
Small business owners are busy, un-responsive at times, fickle .. you name it. It all adds up to additional time no matter how fast you are or how many all-nighters you pull.
And to give some advice to young aspiring web hackers; pulling all nighters and delivering client work at 2:00 AM does not paint a very good picture of you or your firm to the client. It shows that you're unbalanced and that you're not effectively managing your workflow correctly. It will also catch up to you and your health if it becomes routine.
I am talking about a WEBSITE - NOT A WEB APPLICATION
I tried to denote this by using the words "static site". Clearly, I have failed.
Also, for the record: I have built a few multi-page sites (not applications) in 1-2 weeks with NO all nighters (i.e. leadlogsys.com).
That wasn't a web application, that was a website.
And six months would have been an accurate development timeline for it, if it was done right.
These really sound like a "No True Scotsman" arguments. I, and I'm sure several others here, have completed lots of different systems in less than 5 or 6 months. If you use the right tools and you are highly skilled in your trade, you can do lots of things really quickly.
To brush off expedient work by "it wasn't done right" or "it wasn't thoughtfully or thoroughly done" is a logical fallacy.
All of the projects I have completed in 3-4 week time frames were loved by the clients and they are still fully functional and operating smoothly to this day.
I'm including website and web application in my definition, including content management, inventory management, custom CRM with lots of reports, excel download, custom queries, messaging, drop down menus, email notifications, online stores and more. Sites driven by databases with 20+ tables, thousands of items of inventory, multiple warehouses, order management, the whole shebang.
Yes, it can be done and the client can be happy and it can be thoughtful and thoroughly completed.
Which would take me YEARS to build
edit: Perhaps you should look at their portfolio to understand what they do, and what their definition of "website" is: http://www.happycog.com/design/