In 2006, Joani Reisen and Erica Rubach had great plans for a networking site that would match mothers with services in their local communities. At the time, their idea--local content combined with social networking--was unique.

Full of enthusiasm, the pair quit their jobs to launch Momspace.com. Reisen, already an entrepreneur, founded Philadelphia's VIP Magazine; Rubach was director of marketing and development for NBC10 in Philadelphia. The duo developed a business plan, decided what they wanted on the site and hired a web developer to bring the site to life. Then they turned their attention to hiring mothers who would sell ad space for them on Momspace.com.

Their choice of web developer--who was collaborating with a content management team--proved a costly error.

The project stalled several times. And because the web developer and content management team had control of the code, the pair were at the tech team's mercy.

Getting the site completed and launched took two years, $550,000, another $100,000 in legal fees, all of the pair's savings--and the advantage of being first with a new kind of website.

Says Rubach, "We've learned that everything we needed and then some could have been delivered for a tiny fraction of the cost, and in some cases even for free."

Here are some additional lessons learned from their experience:

• Visit your developer and see the setup in person.
  
  
• Never hire a big firm if you're a small company. You won't have any leverage.
  
  
• Never put the entire product in one person's hands, so you're not dependent on one company to move the business forward.
  
  
• Don't rely on the references the company gives you. Find other clients the company has worked with and check with them.
  
  
• Include in the contract that there will be repercussions if the company doesn't make its deadlines.

MomSpace.com is finally up and running, but Reisen and Rubach are changing their strategy by adding a print magazine to their products. "Now we're going to produce a magazine with an awesome website that now works," Reisen says.

MomSpace magazine will launch with 50,000 copies in the Philadelphia market in January. The national version is scheduled to launch before Mother's Day 2009, and Reisen and Rubach hope to open other local markets through franchising. The magazine will be distributed via partners, by subscription and by direct mail to households with children.

Reisen and Rubach are writing a book about their experience. In the meantime, they've compiled a list of tips for entrepreneurs who need to build a website.

How to Avoid Website Development Nightmares

As entrepreneurs in the WWW--wild world of the web--we've made more than our fair share of mistakes and learned many lessons the hard way. We've had countless conversations with so many of our business-owner friends who shrug their shoulders or respond with blank stares when we discuss the topic of web development. We've written this article for them, and for all of the other small-business owners who find themselves doing business in the wild world of the web.

Put a project manager in place. It's practically impossible for you to manage all aspects of a web project while also running all the other aspects of your business. Instead, hire a project manager who has knowledge across many technologies, who is a relentless taskmaster and who can technically translate your overall business objectives to the development team.

To those who don't want to spend money on a project manager, I offer this warning: A business owner's brain and a developer's brain work differently, making communication between the two difficult, at best. Even if you miraculously have all the time in the world to manage the project, you shouldn't. Invest in a project manager.

Have a plan. Before you look for a vendor to help you build your website, create a detailed plan for your site. Determine what the site should do for your business and what it should do for the customers who come to your site.

If you have to have specific features on your site, include them in your plan, along with how the front-end user and the back-end user or administrator will interact with each feature. You don't want to allow user-generated content unless administrators have the ability to remove vulgar material. The plan should also include all of the metrics you want to record and track for your business. A site that allows users to register but doesn't give you access to the registration information isn't very helpful.

The plan will be the blueprint for conducting conversations, getting proposals, agreeing on a contract and moving forward with a developer. Both parties should know as much about the project as possible before the first line of code is written to avoid major problems down the line. Identifying a project manager should be part of your plan.

Know what you want; be realistic about what you need. Technology moves quickly. As a result, what would have had to be custom-built two years ago is now available in prepackaged, out-of-the-box solutions. After you build your plan, be realistic about whether it benefits your business to build your site from scratch and own the code you're developing, or if you simply need a platform with which to interact with your customers, sell product and communicate your message.

If you're not a technology company, building from scratch is almost always a bad idea that will cost you valuable time and money. If you don't have to own your code, you can build a site with memberships, e-commerce, community features, video and more for less than $10,000 in less than a month using a prepackaged product. If you need to own your own code because you're building a new feature set or you can't find exactly what you're looking for in a prepackaged solution, keep reading.

Hire a development firm or two. Don't hire a sole proprietor if you want your project completed correctly and on time. You don't want to be tied to one person's vacation schedule, illness or federal jury duty when it's time for your big launch party.

You probably won't find a firm that's truly a jack of all trades. Red flags should fly into the air if a firm tells you it's the best at design, development, marketing and will host your site, too. Many firms will offer all of these services; find out which one is its true strength. Get client references for each specific type of work. References should be able to give you hard metrics on how well their site is doing.

Even if you do find one firm that seems to meet your need on every level, be wary of putting all your eggs into one basket. At a minimum, hire a secondary firm to handle one of the following tasks: design, development or marketing. The secondary team will give you another point of view on what's being done, help with checks and balances, and can also be there as a backup in case wonder team No. 1 falls through.

Important: Be aware of the "partnerships" your developer of choice has, especially if your site requires a content management system. A development firm with strong ties to a specific software company is likely not the best choice. Development firms should offer several software options, and make recommendations based on your requirements, not based on the company that offers it the best back-door deal.

Don't skimp on hosting, and always have the keys to the servers. Get hosting proposals from several providers. Let them tell you what they think you need. You don't need to spend a ton on hosting, but you can't skimp. With a cheap provider and no service plan, you could find yourself out of business faster than you can say "Help Me!"

When negotiating the hosting contract, be realistic about how much "service" you're going to need. You need either a good managed hosting solution or a development team that can assess hardware issues. You don't need both. Your hosting contract should always be directly between you, the client, and the hosting provider. Your developer should not be involved. That way, if you need to switch developers, your servers needn't be involved.

You should always--always--have direct access to your server(s) and control the passwords at all times. You should know where the servers are physically located, and you should be able to remotely access them at any time or lock people out of them as necessary. If you're paying for dedicated servers in a secure data center, make sure that data center isn't actually someone's kitchen "office."

Make sure you get code updates throughout your project. Just because you paid for your site to be developed and it's functioning publicly on your domain name doesn't mean you own your site. It's one of the biggest mistakes we made, and so has almost every small business we know. If you've not gotten updates to your code throughout the development process, it can be extremely hard to recover all of the code you've paid for at the end of the contract. That's especially the case if the developer knows it won't win any more business from you in the future.

Get frequent copies of your code base throughout the development process. Have it sent via disk or copied to a server that you control. Make sure you're getting source code delivered, not just compiled code. If you've only gotten compiled code and you need to bring in a new development team, you will end up paying that team to reverse engineer all of the code if you hope to use any of it.

Get Documentation. Having the development process documented will save you time and money in the future as you further develop your site and work with different vendors. Whether you use outside resources or hire an internal team to manage your site, you'll need development documentation to help with knowledge transfer as people move in and out of your project. Have a road map of where you've been, so you can determine how you're going to get to where you're going.

Your site's architecture comes first, then the design. Most developers will work with you to build wireframes for your site. These black-and-white block layouts help you determine where various features will go. During this phase you must pay extreme attention to functionality and how users will find what they need on your site. It's easy to get caught up in colors, pictures, layout, etc. After all, the visual product is what you're paying for, right? Wrong. A good designer can make anything look beautiful, but if you've not put the time in to make sure that the site's navigation and key features are clear and easy to find, people won't use your beautiful site.

How will you know if the site is well laid out and features easy to find and use? You won't; your test market will. You're too close to the project to know if you've got it right, so it's critical to test these features with a group of unbiased people who fit your core demographic. Friends and family don't make the best testers, so find people who aren't afraid to tell you that what you're building makes no sense at all.