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Archives for the September 2009

It's Time for a Project Section

As I said in my earlier post, I really need to create a section on this site dedicated to projects. I'm constantly asked for my portfolio, and I can't think of a better way to display my work than to create a "projects" section to the website. As I think about such a section, there is a ton of things that need to be accounted for.

For instance, how much meta data do you really need? Probably not that much. I would probably be easy enough just to have a title and textarea for entering information. Since I use filebrowser in my textarea with tinymce, it would make formatting the text pretty easy.

Posted: Monday, September 28, 2009

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Out With The Old and Into the New

Things are starting to really heat up around here and lot of clients are trying to get ready for the big Christmas rush. Everyone wants their website to be ready for when the masses start shopping online this year. Well you are shopping online this year aren't you?

Whether you are or you aren't, I have two clients that need their websites updated with a new design and feel before the big rush comes on. It just so happens that in this case the websites in question are sites I put up a while ago for some colleagues that decided to go it on their own and see what online retailing was all about. In one case, online sales never got going, but their contact information caught on like wildfire. The site has become outdated, and now it's time for a refresh.

Posted: Saturday, September 26, 2009

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Looks Like The Projects Are Heating Up

Just when I thought I might have to start standing on street corners to sell my services, emails started to come in one after another. Really it couldn't have come at a better time. As I was finishing up some projects, and moving into the support role, I began to think about business development.

As any freelancer knows, getting new projects is the most important and stressful part about being on your own. Your ability to be successful at landing new prospects is the key to you putting food on the table. In addition you have to be able to have more than one project going at a time, just one won't be enough, unless it's a big corporate account.

Posted: Wednesday, September 23, 2009

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404 Pages in Django

While searching this very blog, I noticed something very disturbing that I had never taken care of when building it. I had never integrated the dreaded 404 page. That's right, I had never really thought about what a sly user might be up to when on the site.

Lucky for me I didn't have any really "personal" data out there, but imagine if it was one of my customers websites. That would have looked pretty unprofessional. Luckily Django makes it really easy to create such a page.

Posted: Sunday, September 20, 2009

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It's All About the To-Do List

I'm sure you've heard the expression before "So much to do, so little time"? Well this week that is true for me. It already feels like the week is half over and we've only had a one day vacation. The big deal this week is that school starts again, which means the kids go back to school and it's FREEDOM FOR ME. That's right, I get the peace and quite of home again, which means more work is going to get done.

One of the key elements to owning your own business, especially in a tough economy, is that one must be very organized and on top of things. One of the ways I stay organized is through the use of To-Do lists. Yes I know it sounds corny, but I actually still use half a piece of blank paper every day and write down the things I need to.

Posted: Monday, September 07, 2009

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Pick A Database Wisely

This week I took on a new client that had begun development of their own Django website, but ran out of internal resources and needed to offload some of the development. Their current site is very static, and has little to no content management behind it, so developing something with Django is a big step up.

One of the first things I noticed was that their current achitecture had SQLite running the backend instead of a more stable database, such as MySQL. It wasn't a production server but it was a live webserver that they intended to make live once the creation of the website was complete.

Posted: Saturday, September 05, 2009

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Finding a Good Website Creator

Great businesses often start with great ideas. Many times those great ideas turn into websites before the idea has been fully developed. I for one think this is a great start, especially when it comes to testing the market, but many times this task can be overwhelming. I get asked the question often as to whether or not a designers rates are worth it or not or if I can explain exactly what the offere means. Often times they(the developer/designer) throws fancy words out there like XHTML and CSS. Whereas these may not be strange terms to you and I, those not in a technology field may have no clue what those terms mean.

Just the other day a colleague of mine sent this question to me.

“The developer said that for $250, I would get a unique website of 4 to 5 static pages and 30 days of consulting.” At first that doesn't sound like a bad deal does it.

Posted: Wednesday, September 02, 2009

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