artcoder

Outside of the escrow services provided by Guru.com, what independent escrow services is out there that freelancers can use?

I get some queries because other past clients have referred them to me. And some found me because I passed the PayPal developer certification and got listed on Paypal Developer directory.

I only follow up on jobs that I am really interested in doing. You all know there are some jobs that one would not care for. Based on the experience of those occasions where I did follow up, I feel that many of my potential clients thinks that my prices are too high. Even though I believe that my prices are reasonable and are within market prices. Most first-time website clients have no idea that websites or ecommerce shops costs that much. When I show them with link here that these are typical market prices, most are shocked that it costs so much. (Link not mine, but that of competitor's) We got the situation where I am not willing to work for less and they are not willing to pay for that kind of price (especially in this bad US economy). Hence, that usually mean not much successful bids.

Many time someone will ask me for a price quote on a job. Then after I give them a quote, I never hear from them again. Do I assume that the email got lost? Or do I assume that client is not interested? I would think that they should simply respond back saying "I'm not interested right now". Or "Thanks, but I'll pass on your offer." Or at least let me know that they have received my quote even if they don't want to do the job. I want to know what other's experience is. Do non-interested clients just don't respond back? Or do they usually let you know explicitly that they are not interested?

Have you ever had a client who you provided work for who did not pay the final invoice? I had many good clients in the past. But I just got my first non-paying client just now. Woo hoo! (Oh, I meant Boo hoo!). Please vote in the poll. I am interested in knowing how many bad people are out there. Vote yes, if the client did not pay for the full amount even if they paid the deposit.

I got my cards from VistaPrint. I downloaded the AI business card blank template, designed the cards myself using Adobe Illustrator. And when I received them, it came out perfect. It will come out right if your AI file that you upload to them is right. Very good price. Just have to learn to navigate around all their extras that they want to "suggestive sell" to you.

The reason the header is full-width and the rest of the page is fixed left is because I am using absolute positioning for all the div instead of using traditional relative positions. By doing so, I am able to get my main content div to be at the top of the source code (even above the masthead and all the menu code). This puts my important content near the top of source order improving SEO. The drawback is that everything must be fixed down. I made the header full width to avoid having too much white space for wide screens. Now I have added a background image on the right to fill out some of the white space as well. Hopefully, that should be better. I have also decided to change my domain name to FunAndEducational.com instead of PeacefulParadox (I think that is more relevant and better for SEO too).

New website for games, puzzles, and gifts just launched. Feedback and review is appreciated. Also, what do you think about the domain name?

I know what you are saying. The documentation online is not well structured and organized. That is why I think you will find a book to give you much more structured learning. Some good Drupal book are listed here. If you want videos, the first book listed "Drupal Essential Training has 7 hours worth of video in the enclosed CD. You can preview some of the Drupal training videos here.

Have anyone seen any decrease in the freelancing business due to the downturn in the US and world economy? Or not much change?

I don't think faux columns would work in this case because your columns are changing widths as the user resizes the browsers. This is an interesting problem. Please let us know when you found a solution. As I am curious to know how it is does as well.

As freelancers, do you find yourself having to explain to clients why web work takes so long and costs so much? Or do you just give up and simply say that is how much I charge? For example, if a client ask to add a new menu to horizontal navigation bar, I would have to explain ... " Well, the page is not wide enough to fit that menu even if I shrink the font, so I have to widen your fixed-width layout which happens to be table-based and nested in an overly complex manner. I not only have to do that for one page, but for every other page in your entire website. Plus your menu are graphically constructed and since the width of the menu will change, I have to re-do all the menu graphics. When I'm done, I still have to cross-browser test it in all the major browser and platforms. So that is why it will take that much hours. " And half the time, the information goes over their heads and they still don't understand. And now I have wasted that much time explaining, and if I were to bill them for that time (which I normally don't) it would cost even more. So now I'm thinking, wouldn't it be simpler just saying that is how long it takes and if they don't believe it, then I just move on to the next client?

Day rate? I never heard of that. Why not bill by hour instead? Because "a day" is ambiguous. Some people work 6 hours days and other people work 10 hour days. The standard workday in United States is 8 hours, but in France it is more like 7.

I did some link exchange with some site a year ago. I just checked up on the links. And there were serveral sites that I exchanged links with that already disappeared. I was wondering what you all think is the lifespan of a website? Not websites like google, microsoft, etc which are around for decades. But I'm talking about websites like yours and mine.

Does anyone have any feedback on how well a ZenCart ecommerce shop will run on Hostgator? I've seen ZenCart running on GoDaddy host and it is soooo slow. Wonder if Hostgator's server have the performance necessary for PHP/MySQL app like ZenCart. Thanks in advance.