ErisDS

Happy, happy birthday. How many bumps this year?

Just updating to say... we're now on iTunes http://www.itunes.com/podcast?id=361101338 So now you can subscribe and get the bi-weekly shows automatically. The next one should be available from the 24th of March.

I don't even know if I dare to point out the contradiction in this post. Inexperience is one thing as experience can only be earned & everyone has to start somewhere. But I feel there is something very wrong with mentioning charging for design work in one sentence and then saying you aren't very good at design in the next sentence. I am merely pointing out that saying this sort of thing on a public forum is questionable if you do intend on freelancing. I am commenting on what you have said, not on the quality of your work. Your comp shows you obviously have graphic design skills and potential.

I can't think where or what but I have definitely seen a good, modern, recent implementation of animated gifs on a website. They *can* be well used, but often are not. The rule of thumb, as far as I know it, is to only ever have 1 moving element per view (i.e. the area of the page that is visible at any time). Movement draws the eye, so having more than one thing moving means the eye is drawn all over the page and none of the content is digested or consumed. The question to ask is, what is the most important item on the page - does the eye get drawn to this or distracted from it? If it is distracted then the distracting items should be made static.

Forgive me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the root of your problems with that client to do with the fact you kept doing work for them for free? I find it odd, considering how terribly upset you were, that you would be so eager to jump back into the same situation. Just putting it out there, but it's equally likely that Mr.Funkyowl is in fact a nightmare client and his web developer had good reason to give up & cease contact! I'm not in anyway insinuating that this is the case, only that we have one side of the story here and it is a possibility. Funkyowl, what is certain is that you are not happy with the experience you have had and that your website is currently not fit for purpose. This is a horrible situation to be in and I'm very sorry to hear what has happened. I am no legal guru but my advice would be that if your website is worth so much to your business, that your first priority should be to get it into a state where it is fit for purpose. If you are certain there is no way to proceed with your current developer, then I would start the hunt for a new web development company whom you can trust to take on the completion of the projects. Get some quotes, speak to some companies and find one that you are certain you can rely on. Commission the work and get your website sorted. I believe that it's more likely you'll then be able to get a court to order your old company to pay the cost of fixing the site + damages, rather than the more arbitrary figure of 50% of what you paid. Particularly as your new company will be able to document outstanding issues that they had to fix. Hope this helps, Eris

Amusingly enough... there is evidence to the contrary of your point. For example I assume all 3 names above were intended to be male? As soon as 3. Sam Jenkins becomes 3. Samantha Jenkins You'll find for a lot of people (not everyone, but a large percentage of people).. the name suddenly becomes unprofessional and unemployable. This isn't me jumping on some woe-is-me feminism* bandwagon. It's a fact of life that a lot of freelancers do have to deal with when they discover they actually DON'T have a professional sounding name. Happens more so for the ladies but that doesn't mean it doesn't happen for guys. Does "Charles Gordon" not sound MORE professional? (I'm not saying "Charlie Gordon" doesn't just trying to play devil's advocate). I think you'll find having a good strong male name as your surname will serve you well and that having a more friendly and approachable first name will also serve you well in other ways. I'd go with Charlie Gordon *something* *I'm still waiting for someone to explain why sexism, ageism and racism are all REALLY BAD things, but feminism is a good thing (in this day and age)? P.S. As has already been pointed out a really large proportion of successful companies are people's names. If it gets too difficult to manage they normally lop off the first one. Think J.P.Sainsbury's (or Tesco or Cadbury or Clarks). To bring it into our industry what about Saatchi? Big company - person's name.

I hate IE6 as much as the next guy. But I love my job and wouldn't dream of only doing half of it! Also I don't think this is a good idea. Firstly because there are way more important things I'd like Mr. Brown to spend his time on (thing that are also important than talking to Piers Morgan grrr). And secondly because it will only serve to give confidence to web developers who think it's OK to drop IE6 support completely & without warning to their clients (i.e. not just when it is relevant to do so or after discussion with their clients). It would have been great if the UK jumped on the bandwagon when Germany and France released warnings last month. That could have turned into a global push including education to teach people what a browser actually is... but it didn't. I've asked this question before but, considering one of the biggest hurdles to moving on from IE6 in the UK is the NHS & other public sector bodies, would you really rather your taxes were spent paying for new computers & for IT guys to go around upgrading everything instead of funding the curing of the ill, or sorting out the potholes? Really? Personally I'd MUCH rather my road was resurfaced...

There is absolutely no excuse WHAT SO EVER for posting "PM Sent". It's not a great way to introduce yourself to a new prospective client. If you're interested, say why. Sell yourself for the role, ask a question, make a suggestion... If you haven't got anything useful to say, don't say anything at all... the PM is still there. As for the people who do nothing but "PM Sent" around here, they are leeches and should be banned IMO. This is a community and people should treat it like one. If you want to get a benefit from being here you should contribute as well.

TBH it's a very scruffy page which means it does a poor job of guiding your eyes. For example why is the helpline number at the position it is in the banner? It's not centered, it's not in line with anything. Also the bit of the page that *jumps out* and grabbed me was the "Be breast aware" bit with the picture of a random woman from corrie. What I don't know is if that is meant to be the most important part of the page, or if I were to click on it, would I get more info? The little arrow things make me think of directgov as well. Generally it needs a smarter layout, more and better user of whitespace and someone needs to take a decision as to what the most important bits of the page are instead of having lots of big text competing for my attention.

The simple answer is no, there aren't any "web developer" qualifications. If you are interested in getting a role as a web developer as opposed to a web designer, you'll find that a lot of people have computer science or interactive media qualifications. Also a lot of people have fine art or graphic design degrees much like yourself. In order to convert your degree into one that looks good for a web development role, you need to have good (self taught) knowledge of lots of different web technologies. Some examples: HTML, CSS, Javascript, PHP, MySQL, Flash, Actionscript, CMSs and frameworks (like blueprint for css, jquery for javascript symfony for PHP) and API's (twitter, flickr etc). The more technologies you can say you have knowledge of/dabbled in the better. You then also need to be able to demonstrate this knowledge, both through including live links to projects you have worked on in your application and by answering technical questions (or completing a test) during the interview. As a beginner/trainee, just having one or two demonstrable links (home page/portfolio/something you built just for fun) will be fine to get you to interview, then you just need to be able to talk the talk. FYI my company is hiring and advanced PHP Developer at the moment. Our job description (which is in the looking to hire section) makes no reference what-so-ever to qualifications, only skills/technologies you must be familiar with. Although when we look through CVs we do ideally want to see a good degree, it's not essential in the slightest and doesn't matter what it's in! However, if you really want to do a qualification, the main on people look for is Zend Certification, and that's something I am hoping to do this year. It's basically the PHP exam written/managed by the people who write/maintain PHP.

I use a combination of IETester and VMWare. I have virtual machines setup for the versions of IE7, when I need to test I can just boot a machine. It's much easier to do than it sounds but a lot of people seem to shy away from this solution. VMWare is free software and you can find *images* all over the web. It's literally like a media player but for operating systems. Download an XP image with IE6 on it, save it in a directory. Open it with VMware. Press Play. Make a copy and rename it. Play in VMWare, upgrade to IE7. Now you have both IE6 and IE7 native to test on.

It's a massive, massive improvement. But you've got a phobia I've seen many a time - Bigfatmarginophobia. Take your teeny-weeny 10px edges on everything and WHACK THEM UP. Try 50px for size. You probably won't like it... then you can put it down a bit and you'll be close Next have a good think about typography - what are the most important words on the page? Now emphasize them. Use spacing, bold, italic and colour wisely to improve the readability of your text. People scan the page. I looked at your design for long enough to make these comments but cannot remember a single word that appeared on the page.

I'm with the big boys (and girls). IE 6 is part of your job, deal with it or get a new one that doesn't have any irritating aspects...

Take your hourly rate and times it by the number of hours it will take you to complete.

That's what I saw... then I got distracted...

Obviously I can't say why no one else has replied but it means one of two things normally: It's REALLY AWFUL and we don't know how to tell you It's SO GOOD we have nothing to say In your case I think it's some weird mix of the two. Design wise it's beautiful - well laid out and great use of typography. You've really done the content (the important bit) justice. BUT It made me squint, really bad. The grey is so light its hard to see the contrast and so it hurts your eyes. I've even adjusted my monitor and that did help make it a little easier to look at. I think you need to fiddle with your choice of greys to slightly increase the contrast and reduce the brightness without ruining the overall effect. But hey that's just my $0.02

What about good developers? There'll always be a day when you can't find the right Wordpress plugin

WYSIWYG software builds web pages not consistent, integrated, feature rich web sites or applications. If you just want a web page and you don't want to pay someone to do it for you, why not do it yourself with some software? Surely that's better than undervaluing some poor sod who thinks it'll be "good for their portfolio". Surely it wouldn't damage the web design or development industries if all those arsehole clients buggered off and did it themselves? From what I've seen over the last 18 months (and that's a long ol' time in this industry), it has already started to change. Yes there are still 10-a-penny "webdesigners" happy to make you a website and a logo (maybe even with pie charts), and yes there are still 10-a-penny "entrepreneurs" and business owners who think that websites are a REALLY cheap way to solve all of their problems and who think that webdesigners SHOULD build facebook for 12p, but above all that crud, things are changing. TBH, even the demands are changing. People aren't asking for a 5-page website, a logo and a contact form for £50 anymore. They want a 5-page website with a contact form, subscription, live twitter feed, editable news articles, javascript effects, full branding (not just a logo) and SEO. Problem is that so many still want it for £50. IMO Above all the devaluation and unrealistic requirements the industry is actually changing and developing., It seems that one-man-band web designer/developers are slowly finding themselves unable to compete or fulfill client requirements. Instead those people are choosing one direction (design or development) and teaming up with other people more experienced in other areas to create strong teams of freelancers who are capable of competing & providing for their clients. I see our industry dividing further and further in the future, such that there will be room for branding designers, UI designers, front end developers (HTML + CSS), behavioural developers (javascript/ajax), information architects, database engineers, etc etc etc. People will have to become experts in one field or another and build stronger teams to create full systems. But then again the internet may be an entirely different thing in a few years!

As I said to you in a PM, it's very hard to explain how it all works to you when you have absolutely no CMS starting point to explain from. Get stuck in, have a go with a basic theme and once you have Wordpress setup and doing something like what you want it to you will begin to understand what Wordpress is capable of and how. Whether you start by building a theme, or start by playing with someone else's it doesn't really matter, the first thing you need to do really is actually install Wordpress and take a look at the software itself! At the moment you're kinda asking how to make spaghetti bolognaise before you've figured out what a saucepan is!

LMAO... does no-one else want an iLobe?

Loooool! What is it with men and side-boob? I think I feel a new website coming on...

Magento > X-Cart. I've worked with both and Magento is definitely the more powerful of the two. Its backend is nicer and it provides much better info/feedback/client experience IMO.

I don't think so. But don't quote me on it.

It's all about Bridge Street. In fact there's a rather nice song about it by a local artist: http://invocal.bandcamp.com/track/sex

That would be personal choice I believe! Night out in Northampton last night and what an array of sights! A heavily pregnant woman heavily drunk and a guy getting taken down by 5 coppers in the space of about 3 minutes! Woo what fun.