KeithP

That might be worth a shot Jack so thanks for the suggestion.

I don't host the site unfortunately so no back-up either.

This is one of those problems that doesn't appear to have a simple solution so I'm reaching out in the hope somebody can point me in the right direction. I built a site in WordPress for a Client last year and they wanted a soundboard built to demo their skills - here's the page. The Client emailed me yesterday to say the soundboard isn't working however, the page hasn't been touched in a while and was working perfectly, so I've got a sneaking suspicion that the plug-in used to deliver the soundboard functionality has been deleted - my problem is I don't remember which plug-in it was, or indeed if this is the actual reason the soundboard has stopped working. Here's an example code snippet to display each 'sound' on the page... <h5>CALIFORNIAN GIRL</h5> <audio id="1" src="/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/californiangirl.mp3"></audio> <button id="button-play"></button><button id="button-pause"></button> It's a long shot but looking at the formatting of the code snippet (and the ID) does anyone recognise which audio plug-in might have been used or am I missing something more obvious that's broken? I've tried installing all of the following plug-ins but to no avail... Audio player Blubrry PowerPress Compact Audio Player HTML5 jQuery Audio Player JW Player 6 Plugin for Wordpress mb.miniAudioPlayer MediaElement.js - HTML5 Audio and Video PB oEmbed HTML5 Audio Wp Music Player I can't imagine that when I found the original plug-in, I spent too long searching through the WP plug-in repository so it has to be one of the more popular plug-ins. Any suggestions greatly appreciated.

Thanks porkchops - I've been wandering around in a state of ignorant bliss when it comes to tieing Clients into a proper contract. However, I've now seen the light and am off to sue somebody.

All sorted - I went around to his house and simply shot him. No, really. I sent him a very candid email saying that he would be better off using a different Designer who was more tolerant of his specific requirements. Basically I said I was just too busy to give him the attention he so obviously wants. 20 minutes later he was on the phone apologising and saying he simply didn't realise he was making such a nuisance of himself. Apparently it was his wife who told him to ring and apologise as he as a habit of doing exactly the same with the guy who services their car and the Instructor at their gym. What an idiot. I shall be treading very carefully with the guy now and the minute he steps out of line, I have permission to contact his wife who stated she would "deal with him". Result.

I've think I've got everything covered legally but the reality is that I simply don't want to have this guy as a Client. It may be fine to have everything written in a contract but what it doesn't cover is the sheer amount of time this type of Client sucks up on, quite frankly, trivial BS. He is one of those people who simply never think they're wrong and I can't stomach dealing with people like that. One of the things I've learned about being self-employed is that it's not simply about the money; I value my quality of life and having Clients like this guy will only give me stress in the long term.

BTW I'd probably brace myself for "Why does my site not appear in the top search result position" and "What can you do me for £50 on Adwords?" I don't doubt it! And you're spot-on with the "kid in the candy store" analogy - I've just had another email from him saying he now wants the nav bar "to be as cool as the one on Apple.com". I don't really need his business and it's not a simple case of completing the site and being rid of him - I'm stuck with the guy for months or (shudders) even years. Like all self-employed Designers, there are a finite amount of hours in the week and every minute spent dealing with indecisive control freaks is a minute I'm not earning money so I'm reluctant to sign-over my entire life to this guy which is what he seems to expect.

I accepted a job from a Client a month ago and after agreeing terms, I started work on the draft for his new site. I put up a landing page and designed a logo which he then came back to say he didn't like and could I 'design' something close to the example he'd created in Word (yep, it was shocking). Anyhow, I changed the logo so it looked like his crappy example and got on with the home page draft. After 10 hours of work I let him see the draft for the home page and yesterday I received a huge list of revisions including revisions on elements he's originally asked me to duplicate from another site. Of course I don't mind making revisions but basically this guy simply wants to design every element himself regardless of how all these elements work together on the page; he's a total control freak and to make it worse. he's an indecisive control freak! To cut a long story short, I'm only 20% into this site and I can see this Client is going to be a high-maintenance nightmare. I'd rather cut my losses with the work I've done (and can probably be re-used) and get rid of the Client now before he saps any more of my time. Trouble is, I'm not sure the best way to do it whilst preserving my reputation and not offending him to the point where he tries to sue me for breach of contract. So, what would you do?

A Client has an online store they had custom built in 2004 in ASP. The site is an absolute mess and lacks a lot of functionailty so and the Client now wants to run a modern platform such as Prestashop which obviously runs in PHP. Problem is that his current site gets around 30,000 visitors a month through the search engines so if we simply point his domain at a new PHP server with all it's new URL's, his traffic is going to bomb and so is his business. Because there is so much at risk here, I'm not sure it's a project I want to undertake and it's far from my area of expertise but the Client is old school and isn't keen on finding somebody else to do this. Can anyone give me some guidance on the best way forward hear? I'm more than happy to pay for some expertise if it results in the minimum of disruption to my Clients business. Incidentally, this guy is my Client from another site I built, not this one in case you were confused why I built a crap website in the first place.

Thanks for the reply. You're right that I hadn't spotted that but it wasn't the problem. After a process of elimination I discovered it was my nav bar div width which needed an IE rule - I wonder how much time I would free up if IE disappeared overnight? Wishful thinking I guess.

I'm working on this site and it works fine in Chrome, FF and Safari but not...damn IE! What's happening is that when you navigate from page to page, the body of the page appears around 40px below where is should then jumps up to the correct position. This happens in a split second and you might expect it when the site first loads but not when navigating between pages. I initially thought it was the lack of scroll-bar that was causing it but I've tried the overflow CSS rule and it doesn't help. I've also tried making the page height 2000px and it still happens so it doesn't look like a scroll-bar issue. I've also tried stripping out some of the external file calls in the header such as GA, still no good. Now I'm stuck - does anyone have any idea what could be causing this? The offending version of IE is 8 (not tested it in any other versions). Many thanks in hopeful anticipation!

Probably wouldn't be a short time with my level of PHP unfortunately!

Hi I'm putting a site together for a Client who wants to show availability and pricing for a holiday home that they wish to rent out. I need a basic PHP script which will show an availability calender with pricing and enquiry form on the front-end and a simple CMS at the back-end so the Client can change prices and availability. Does anyone have any recommendations on available scripts they've used? Obviously I'd prefer an OS script but am willing to pay for a script if it saves me time on install and isn't plastered with the coders copyright notices and links. Thanks in advance.

I'm currently putting together a site which includes a calculator for giving visitors a value for scrap gold they're looking to sell, similar to this site. However, at the last minute the Client decides they want to self-edit the prices themselves on a daily basis. So, I now need to come up with a calculator that also has the facility for some sort of integrated CMS so the Client can edit the prices within the calculator. I physically don't have the time to do this so was hoping to outsource it. Does anyone have the time/skills to do it or point me in the direction of somewhere I can find a Freelancer? I would point out that there is only a limited budget for this ;o)

Thanks for your answer. I was hoping to find a slightly more comprehensive solution which also dealt with the user-interface element where the Client can edit the prices.

Sorry, reading back my message it could have been a bit clearer. The Clients site is one of theses gold-buying sites and the calculator required is the same as the one on this site. Bascially the visitor enter how many grammes of Gold they have and of what carat and the price comes up.

I'm currently putting together a site which includes a calculator which gives visitors a price for their goods based on the quantity they have. I assumed it would be pretty straight-forward; you enter you have 6 x 'type A' widgets or 3 x 'type B' widgets and the calculator gives you a price and I had already started putting together a form to achieve this function. However, at the last minute the Client decides they want to self-edit the prices themselves on a daily basis. So, I now need to come up with a calculator that also has the facility for some sort of user interface so the Client can edit the prices within the calculator. As with every problem, I could spend 2 days searching around for a solution but I simply don't have the time and I am hoping the brains on this forum might be able to suggest a solution. My own knowledge of PHP doesn't extend this far so I'm slightly unsure how to even approach this problem. Any advice or suggestions would be hugely appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Thanks I hadn't realised what my Client wanted was a slideshow with the Ken Burns effect. I've found this site which achieves the effect with JQuery but in my view, it's a little clunky and probably better in Flash. Incidentally, I spotted on the cover of .Net magazine something about creating this type of effect purely in CSS...I didn't have time to pick it up so did anyone actually read this article and could give an overview on it?

Hi I have a Client who has a holiday home with some rather nice views. Basically, they'd like a banner containing an image of the views which pans automatically on the page load, from left to right. Does anyone know of any (preferably free) scripts for achieving this effect? Thanks in advance.

Tricky one that. On one hand you don't want to fall out with a customer but on the other hand, they've 'stolen' your work. Perhaps a polite email to the customer is in order, suggesting that their Web Designer (sic) may want to pay you for the work he/she has passed off as their own.

I started using Dreamweaver but one major problem that you will encounter is that if something is broken in a site, you won't know how to fix it if you don't understanding the HTML/CSS behind it. If you apply yourself, you could get enough coding experience under your belt within 6 months. I use a pretty basic code editor and Adobe Fireworks for the design work...I did attempt to use DW again recently but I still found it produced bloated, non-compliant code. Whichever path you take, best of luck.

I trialled them last year and was paying £16 per lead for sites up to around £600 if I recall. They were sending out quotes to five Designers at the same time so at best, you've only got a one-in-five chance of getting the business. Realistically though, many people getting quotes will end up using a company they sourced themselves so I'd guess a realistic conversion ratio is closer to one-in-ten. At £20 per lead, that's at least £200 just to secure one customer...way too much in my opinion.

I'm thankfully now a the point where I'm getting plenty of work however, I need to get myself a bit more organised managing my Clients. I've been scouring Google for some decent, offline CRM software but the few I've trialled don't really fulfill my needs. Does anyone here have any suggestions for CRM software that would be ideal for a small web design business? One issue I've come across with the software I've trialled is that it doesn't allow me to list more than one Client website in the 'contacts' section; pretty useless as I've some Clients who have more than one website. I also need to store sensitive Client info such as PayPal log-ins so I'd prefer not to use a web-based system. I'd also rather buy the software outright than pay a monthly fee. Any suggestions chaps?

Looks really good; you might want to use just one font in the body though.

Salutation, you have Mr & Mrs but no Miss (or Ms.). The form input box also needs aligning so it's the same width as the other input boxes. Otherwise, looks good.