Creating a new design always involves a recombination or evolution of existing design patterns and styles. It happens ever so often that one is inspired by another site’s design and that certain aspects are carried over into the new design ‚Äì albeit in a transformed and adapted way. This is the reason why web design galleries exist and we are both proud and flattered that our current design has been featured in numerous galleries last summer, for example here, here, here, and here.
A different matter, however, are pixel by pixel rip-offs. The software developer Panic, for example, has gathered a whole collection of those.
Yesterday one of our users (thanks Vitor!) pointed us to a complete rip-off of our current web design. It turned out to be the most blatant one I had ever seen. See for yourself:
I not only had quite some fun dissecting what the plagiator did do or rather didn’t do, I also learned a lot in the process. I am happy to present to you today our new tutorial:
- Be sure to use the same color scheme. This makes Cultured Code users feel right at home.
- Pay attention even to the smallest of details, like the little silhoutte icons in the navigation bar, the smaller dollar sign…¬†Only cowards cover their tracks.
- Treat inconsistencies with respect. The original designer must have had a reason to use Helvetica in the navigation bar and Lucida Grande for everything else.
(Which reminds me of something I forgot to update when I changed the whole website to Lucida Grande…) - Don’t even think about changing one pixel of an icon. You don’t want to mess up someone else’s work. Also, keeping the same filename makes maintenance a lot easier in case the original website updates their graphics.
- Paying hommage to Panic’s Transmit truck is a must for every serious rip-off artist.
- If the original website doesn’t have a contact form to copy, create your own. It’s not that hard. You can do it!
- And for those who still don’t get it: Leave one link unchanged to prove beyond any doubt, that you must have completely copied the entire source code.
- Claim a copyright.
What can we learn from all of this? The bold variant of Lucida Grande looks kind of nice in the sidebar. We should try that too.
Pinging is currently not allowed.
The end was hilarious
Haha! Very amusing write-up, guys. Quite unbelievable how some people think they can get away with this kind of thing, eh?
Hey Guys!
Just checked out the page (Tipp: You can easily find it via google…)
Ridiculous rip off!
And check out the “support” - contact form… It just breaks down in Firefox (on the mac) because of a crappy source code…
Poor!
All the best from bonn, germany, Oliver
It’s good to see you guys are handling it the way you are. Posting it in a blog/ twitter feed gives off the feel of community involvement, vs. reading about it on ValleyWag because of a legal dispute.
There is such a thing as copyright you know, and you should defend yours. I hope you’ve told these guys to take their site down ASAP ? If you don’t then it effectively gives the green light to anyone else who wants to rip off your site.
On the flip side, you could release your design as open source, with attribution, which would probably drive more traffic back to yourselves as people want to check out the guys that created this nice design.
Reminds me…I’ve been looking for a new design for my site…. ;)
I wish I was sponsored by Cheap Cigarettes :/
Hehehe, nice write up. The net is a sad place.
Definitely send this goon a “Cease and Desist” email.
I think you shouldn’t have blacked out those sections… i think people like this deserve to be labelled and ridiculed publically.
and publicly. *sigh* i can’t switch between spanish and english… it hurts my head!
The way you face the “issue” is declarative of the taste and creativity you own and put in your apps too.
Thanks a lot for the smile you gift us.
You can drop him a note and let him know how good the site looks:
[Link removed by Cultured Code]
Wow. That’s impressive. These guys are either really young, really new to the web, or really stupid. Or all three.
Wow, this is just ridiculous. Haha did he think like no one would put 2 and 2 together. I hope you told them to take it down.
So how did they get your source code?
Hey Vramin:
Right click and choose “View page source” (or some variation depending on the browser). There’s even software that will troll through a site, download every linked page, images, CSS files, etc.
It’s always sad when someone just copies source code. Half the fun of doing designs inspired by others is trying to duplicate what they did.
This is hilarious - good for you for being such good sports about it. Now, go nail ‘em to the wall! ;-)
p.s. I know you know this, but Things rocks - I’m totally loving it. Thanks so much for the work you do…
These people are sadly incompetent and not worth your time. I wouldn’t even give them the benefit of a cease and desist, as it’s just minutes you don’t spend on what you’re building.
a “web designer” ripped off my portfolio site a while back… down to the graphic of me in the primary navigation, and the blurbs about each project. translated them into another language, and he was back on the road :)
he didn’t do quite as good of a rip off job. the one graphic he couldn’t use was the humungous one at the top of the page with my name on it, so he replaced it with one that was impossible to read and totally inconsistent with the rest of the design.
plus, homeboy hotlinked a javascript file that was still on my server… that’s usually a bad idea.
oh, and i love your friend’s “sponsors” block. nothing says “high-quality, professional flash gallery solutions” like selling a handful of site-wide links to whatever spam sites will pay for ‘em :)
I thought points 4 and 5 were bad enough, then I couldn’t help but shake my head in disbelief at point 7. A phenomenal theft to be sure!
For you all to know:
I wrote an email today to the owner of the rip-off-site with the following words:
About five minutes ago I got the following answer:
Wordpress theme, hu? Sure.. ;)
Cheers, Oliver
I sent them a email too. It read:
I got the same response as Oliver.
@justin - pure gold.
@Oliver nice one dude.
FFS! if i had just discovered that my “designer” ripped off another site… i would take my site down and replace it with a holding page straight away.
I like that he used the word designer… like somehow the person who did that is (at any level) a designer. ha.
I was SO excited to see some movement on the Things blog. Wahoo!
Then, I see it’s nothing to do with the app. Sigh. Driving me into the arms of another GTD prog.
While I absolutely sympathize w/ the ripoff and agree w/ the rant, it would’ve been nice to see a Things update along w/ the rant.
Disappointment for sure.
They just changed it.
They’re new slogan is: “Products from Web Developers for Web Developers.”
The site is completely broken.
They seem to have taken it down. Perhaps they have seen the error of their ways.
@Possible Future Things User: I’m sure CC is really worried you might go elsewhere. Throwing a tantrum is definitely a good way to motivate a software developer. Quality users like you are worth keeping! : )
ahh, @Possible Future Things User - I’m using Things full blast already since many months, so could you, even if not perfect yet - when will anything on this planet be? - it has replaced all my other GTD applications with huge bravura.
This rip-off - hats off to being able to see some kind of humor in it. It’s flattery, yeah, but… - definitely had one laughter after the other in regards to their stupidity, especially about not renaming a thing, keeping the same colors PLUS a full link. LOL… - and yeah, push responsibility off to ‘your designer’, haha.
Hey Bob Nolin - I don’t know where you were looking, but last time I checked, disappointment does not equal rant. It’s called opinion. Helps the world go round. There would be no good products if everyone was an ass-kisser rather than being honest.
And while I’m fine if your sarcastic presumption of “I’m sure CC is really worried” is correct, I’ll bet it’s not if CC is even half of a business person.
Fact is, I like what I see w/ Things so far, but for me, other progs currently do better. I’m eagerly awaiting one that will bolt ahead, which is why I’m waiting for Things news. The main beef I have is that if there’s time for a lengthy update about somebody poaching the website, there’s time for even a small update about Things since it’s the “Things Blog”, not necessarily the “Cultured Code Blog”.
Ian Beck: A wget might get the rendered HTML pages and CSS, possibly even JavaScript, but I generally don’t see that as “source code” (I’m assuming that the site runs on Rails or PHP, haven’t looked to see which).
So they stole the styles and graphics, but not the source. Still stinks, but it’s not like they broke into the server or anything.
(Serves me right for paying attention to a troll…)
Funny things happen when you find the former rip-off web site and click “contact” in the footer. There it is again.
the site is actually running on wordpress. i’m sure their “designer” really created a wordpress theme based on the CC site.
now whether that “designer” is anyone other than the frunderful owner/proprietor/chief architect of the company is open to debate :)
Hi Chris,
I might come across totally strange, but … :
You are doing a very good job, you could just try to be proud of having people creating a copy cat. Just keep your focus on improving your outstanding work. To think (write and care) about those copy-cats gives you the wrong focus and you might waste your time. Even worse you help them to gain popularity.
BTW: I understand your frustration.
Cheers, MAnfred
You guys have been amazing! Let me give a litte background to explain.
We contacted the plagiator a few days before we posted this article. We politely explained the situation and asked him to switch back to the former design, which we knew was still around (it could be accessed at test.(his domain).com). We didn’t get a response.
Apparently some readers began writing messages to the plagiator. We never intended for this to happen. But for all we know these messages seemed to have been polite enough, which we appreciate greatly.
Then after Oliver posted his experience (see his comment above), we also received an email. Quote: “We actually just used a wordpress theme, and obviously it is based off of your site… it will take me a couple of weeks to find someone else to redesign and relaunch.”
I assume that readers kept sending messages to the plagiator. Yesterday, after we asked him where he found the “wordpress theme”, he told us that it was actually created by his designer. He also told us that he changed the design back to the former one. Quote: “… we are going back to v2. Sorry once again about this. I’ll make sure my developers are of a higher moral quality before hiring to do a project.”
Thanks guys!