Speculative or commissioned: decide which you're doing

In October I redesigned the homepage of AllWeb, a one-day conference in Tirana. Nobody asked me to. That one fact shapes the whole project, so it's the first thing to decide and write down.

A commissioned site is one a client asked for. The client answers your questions, confirms facts in writing, and decides when it goes live. A speculative site is one you make before anyone asks, to show what you'd do. There's nobody to ask, and nobody has approved it.

Being speculative changes four things. First, every page says who made it. The footer here reads: concept redesign by me, not affiliated with or commissioned by AllWeb. Second, facts come only from what the business has published, each with the date you read it. My brief lists every fact I used, all from their own site, read on the fifth of October. An earlier draft said they were founded in 2012. Their site never says that, so it stayed off the page. Third, it stays out of search. The page carries a noindex tag, and the server sends the same rule in its header. Both are checked here on the live site. Fourth, it lives at a preview address on my own account, and the page names that address as its own. It never goes on their domain, because launching is their decision, and they haven't made it.

Now write it where every AI session will read it: the first lines of the project's instruction file. What kind of project it is, who the client is, where facts may come from, the line every page carries, and the rules for search and the address. If a client had asked, the same lines would name them. They'd say who confirms the facts. And they'd say the site goes on the client's domain when the client approves it. Building a speculative demo safely has its own lesson, on spec work.

First decide whether anyone asked for the site. If nobody did, say who made it, use only dated public facts, keep it out of search, and never put it on their domain.