Wow, Marc Canter pointed out this post from Charles Warner. Charles tells a nightmarish story of the collapse of his Web business, Daily Comedy, due in part to the nonperformance of the site's developer.

Charles writes:

I was promised that we could drag and drop pictures from one page to another. We couldn't. I was promised we could serve ads using the [the vendor's] platform. We couldn't. I was promised [the vendor] had a mass email program that worked. It didn't. I was promised that [the vendor] would delver a usuable Help section. They delivered a totally inadequate section for an old product and I had to write a new help section from scratch.

The software was highly unstable, so unstable, in fact, that [the vendor] had to constanly try to tweak it and kept it on their own servers rather than move it to the servers I had leased. It was a mess. [The vendor] was horribly understaffed and underfunded and was therefore awful to deal with when we could get them on the phone

I withheld the name of the vendor, because it's easy to find, there are two sides to every story, but that name could be replaced by any unqualified developer.

As a web developer since 1999 and a developer of community web sites since 2003 it bothers me to see tons of developers flock to this market because they smell money, but have very little care for their client's business or success. But, this world has always been full of shysters, snake-oil salesmen, and realtors! So, it is imperative for customers - especially those that are not technically savvy - I wonder how they were going to program "drag and drop pictures from one page to another" - to properly reasearch their vendor.

An Easy Checklist For Choosing A Web Developer

1. Look at the work the vendor has deployed before. Determine what features in previous sites are applicable to the project being envisioned? What features are going to be new? Can you find these features in other sites on the Web?
2. Is the vendor capable of delivering the whole value chain from needs assessment through to deployment and maintenance? Have they developed something of similar scope?
3. Does the vendor have the capacity? Ask which staff or contractors will be working on the project. When were they hired and were they involved with the vendor's previous projects? Depending on the project, you might want to ask who are the backups should that staff member need to be replaced during the project.
4. Ask to see some documentation from a previous project. What were the deliverables in a project of similar scope? Ask to see it.
5. And most importantly, speak to the vendor's customers and references. Make sure a few are recent clients: within the last 12 months. Be sure to ask the reference about the nature of work the vendor did. Sure they may be a good reference, but was the work even relevant to the business for which they are now being considered?

Not every vendor/client relationship is a 100% love-in, but good developers have more than enough people shouting their praises.

Remember when a vendor says "no".
No, we cannot do that, or
No, we cannot do that for that price or that time line.
They may in fact know what they are talking about and there is a good chance that they have your best interests at heart - more so than that vendor who without thought quickly says, "Yes, we can do that."