Friday, December 21, 2007

The Reusability of Web Components

If you go to http://www.churchwebsitedesign.org.uk/webdesign.html, you can find an article that begins as follows:

Web Design is Product Design
By Daniel Gibbins - Project Leader and Operations Manager

Many people think of web design as being closely related to graphic design, or even just another branch of the profession. Look in your local Yellow Pages and you'll find dozens of graphic designers offering websites as one of their long list of services, along with logo design, business cards and brochures.

Websites Have to Work

Brochures, magazines ads, signs, logos and posters all differ from websites in one crucial aspect: people don't have to use them. All designers have to make sure their work is attractive, but product designers need to ensure their products are also easy to use and have features that people want.


Gibbins' article continues from there, down to the very bottom:

The Church Website Design Project © 2007

Back up at the top of the article, there is an "As Featured On Ezine @rticles" button, which directs you to http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Daniel_Gibbins.

However, when you click on this button, you are no longer directed to Gibbin's page, but to the main Ezinearticles.com page. While there, perhaps you may want to read the Terms of Service. Here's the first term:

1. You declare that you are the sole owner and author of the article and own 100% of all copyrights pertaining to it.

Well, it's too bad that Ezinearticles.com seems to be having some malfunction regarding Daniel Gibbins' bio. So let's see what other people have to say about the Daniel Gibbins article "Web Design is Product Design."

Now this is interesting:

If you’ve read my book, Web Design in easy steps, you’ll know I devote some space to the fact that Web Design is very like product design … well the N95 is a superb example of product design.

But this isn't signed by Gibbins; it's signed by some guy named "Rich." Oh well, I guess Gibbins must use a pen name or something like that.

Let's see what else I can find out about Gibbins' article. Ah, now this is interesting:

5. The rules of good design

Pencil & paper
How big is a web page?
Getting to grips with the grid
The art of typography
Fonts on the Web
Websites aren't printed on paper
Using color
Lines & shapes
Gradients & texture
Size & contrast
Position is everything
Guiding people's eyes
Attention to detail
Less is more
Web design is product design
The call to action
Ugly websites make money
Case study: Convention & style


Hmm...but this page doesn't name Gibbins either. It refers to some guy named Richard Quick.

So how do I find out about the DANIEL GIBBINS article "Web Design is Product Design"? Ah, here's a mention of Gibbins and the article, again written by this "Rich" guy:

I was doing a vanity search recently, and discovered an article which looked similar to something I’d written. Very similar. Identical in fact.

The original article was written by me and appears on pages 74 and 75 of my book, with the title “Web Design is Product Design”.

The plagiarized article appears on a website called “The Church Web Design Project”.

It is stolen - word for word - from my book....

I was particularly intrigued to find a link to Ezine Articles, an article marketing website, on the page. I followed the link and found that the same person who had stolen my article to use on his own, supposedly Christian, website had also posted various other articles - many of them by me on Ezine Articles.

The person’s name is Daniel Gibbins. He was claiming to be the writer and an “expert” on web design....

Let me make myself crystal clear on this. Daniel Gibbins is not the copyright holder and does not have permission to use these articles. The articles he’s used are stolen.

Not only that, he’s claiming to be the author and attempting to win clients as a web designer off the back of this “expertise”. As far as I’m concerned, that’s defrauding me personally. I’m the author and it took me a lot of time and hard to work gain any level of expertise I may have. If people are going to be using any web designer off the back of those articles, it should not be him.

Also, he is also putting other people on the wrong side of the law, as they will unknowingly use these articles, without realizing that they’re actually breaking copyright.

It’s one thing to copy work out of a published book and use it on your own site. That’s wrong. But to publish it on a website where other people are MEANT to download and use the articles and to set yourself up as an “expert” on web design is just downright dishonest.


For the record, I heard about this whole thing from a William Tildesley post.

Tildesley links to a page that alleges some other thefts by Gibbins, including "Becoming a Search Result on Google" and "Does Google Know You're There? PageRank and More," which apparently originated in a book entitled Google: The Missing Manual by Sarah Milstein, Jude Biersdorfer, and Matthew MacDonald.

Well, guess what? Richard Quick is trying to make Daniel Gibbins a highly ranked search term:

would like to ask readers of this blog to do me a tiny favour. I’d like them to link to this article using the link text Daniel Gibbins. Eg.

Daniel Gibbins

I want anybody who searches for “Daniel Gibbins” in Google to find this page first.
Then, I hope, they won’t use him.


Isn't technology wonderful?

But I have one question: who actually took the photograph of Fakenham Church?

P.S. Also check this out.

[mrontemp business] | [mrontemp politics] | [mrontemp technology] | [mrontemp del.icio.us tags]

Sphere: Related Content

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the link.
His Ezine article has been delete for breaking their terms of service.

I believe Richard is perusing this matter further through different channels.

Ontario Emperor said...

Good for Richard.

This raises a more troubling question - most people will go straight to Gibbins' website and will never bother to search on his name. Yet, if Gibbins has not been convicted of a crime (not yet, anyway), would it be right for Gibbins' ISP to shut down his website? Troubling decisions.

Ontario Emperor said...

Just looked at the links. Has someone stolen my content? I'm afraid to click on the link, in case I get assaulted with nude pictures of Tom Tancredo - he has to do SOMETHING.

Anonymous said...

Well his website:
http://www.churchwebsitedesign.org.uk/
is hosted by:
cortinawebsolutions.co.uk, another of his websites, which in turn I believe to be hosted on:
http://www.heartinternet.co.uk, which sells reseller accounts (which he probably owns).

I'm not sure if Richard has contacted Heart Internet, I would probably expect so, but you know what hosting providers are like, and what with Christmas in less than two days he may not here back for a few days.

I think the main point in taking over the search results for Daniel Gibbins was to disgrace him online.

Obviously I can't say much more at the moment into what Richard is doing to peruse the matter (just in case) but I hope we can make an example of Daniel.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for covering the issue on your blog. The issue was first raised at my site the iVirtua Community
http://www.ivirtuaforums.com/

via
http://www.ivirtuaforums.com/daniel-gibbins-web-design-expert-is-a-fake-liar-and-fraud-t14387

As a personal friend of Richard I can say we are persuing the matter to a great extent :)

Thanks for the support, once again!

Anonymous said...

http://www.heartinternet.co.uk is a bona fide company.

It would be eay to shut down his site via cease and desist/hosting provider contact, however that would not stop the guy from getting new hosting.

What would, is damaging his professional reputatation. He is the member of the general UK teaching council who accredit teachers in the UK, and he teaches A level Media and English. Both the school he teaches at (his employer), and also the teaching council in the UK, alongside his local church, would all strongly oppose fraud and plaigurism.

I'm sure contacting those relative parties respectively would do more in terms of making Gibbins realise the severity of what he has done.