Hey, MWI got its website ripped off today! But they didn't do a very good job.

Now you might say "But these websites look almost nothing like each other!" True, they only bear minimal resemblance to each other now, and perhaps the sin is forgivable for that, but the design is a ripoff nonetheless. If you need proof, read on.

We have a stats package on our website that tracks referring websites. We were getting a ton of referral traffic from http://www.evolvsolutions.com today. When I visited the site I found out it was because they had copied our entire site, HTML code, links and all, and they had failed to change many of the links which meant they were still pointing back to our site. As they went around testing the site and finding the links to change they evidently clicked through to our site a lot, which caught my attention.

I'm not so concerned about them ripping off our site as I am that people will think we ripped off their site. Of course any designer could tell the original, but the lay people must be protected from this kind of fraud.

I don't think this is exactly what Cameron was talking about in his article Good Designers Copy, Great Designers Steal.

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Comments

nice. you'd think they would at least be smart about it. did you send them an email?

Yeah, I sent them an email saying "We're flattered you like our website so much." and that was it. I guess that's why the site suddenly disappeared this morning.

DId you notice that they disabled the right click?
Can we google bomb them?

Please... like you're anyone to talk about being "inspired" by another site's design. :)

That's it--no Christmas card for you this year Matteo.

Looks like they got the site back up. With some minor changes so that it's no quite such a blatant ripoff. Maybe by the time everything is done it will look more like it was "inspired" from our site, rather than a copy and paste job.

I've had the exact thing happen. A local MLM ripped off my website design (source code included) within days of me launching a site for their competitor's web site. They even had the nerve to email me and say "we just love that site" a day before they launched theirs. After calling me in the middle of the night to ask if I'd sold their design to the competition (and me being righteously indignant) my client actually gave me a bonus. I guess they were flattered.
So be flattered. Their rip off in no way compares to your site.

Haha! The place is right down the street from where I live here in Overland Park, KS. Want me to go over and give someone a good @$$kickin?

Let's just say that I'm not not asking you to do it...

ouch bad rip.

You can report design rip offs at invision-graphics.com.

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