WBD

Heh, anyway... http://www.reviewcentre.com/reviews184222.html Sounds good, think I'll try them.

Thanks for the quick reply and the tip. Any stories to tell about those guys - are they reliable, fast hosting? Hows the support?

I need to install Silverstripe 3 but my web host (I found out today) - Nu Blue - doesn't support PHP 5.3 because of some backwards compatibility issues with other software (and they don't provide the option to switch versions for the shared packages), which is a shame because in all other regards I've found them to be rather excellent. Can anyone recommend a decent, reasonably priced, well performing, UK based, web hosting service that has good technical support and supports PHP 5.3?

I find the best way to get anyone to learn anything is to create a series of simple step-by step exercises but most importantly of all - get them to go through those exercises themselves. It's only by doing that we learn, seeing alone just doesn't cut it. Then if and when they get stuck they can ask relevant questions.

Interesting, I've heard about this but a few people were complaining it blocks a lot of legitimate traffic - do you have any experience with them (good or bad)? Worth a try I think... thanks.

I have a customer who might benefit from having their content on multiple servers, each one in a different geographical area (as he gets lots of customers from the USA, UK and Oz). Currently, it's a static site not a CMS system (I have something on my PC which I use to generate the content as a static site - nothing fancy, just a bunch of code that fills out HTML templates based on config files and then uploads that static content to the ftp server). So, I was wondering if there was a simple 'off-the-shelf' solution which would let me install a proper CMS system on one server, but mirror this content automatically onto the others, without having to install CMS systems on those too. I think I'll need to put a simple IP-based redirection script on all the servers but if the session is 'set' to go to that server, it will dig out the page from the cache instead and serve it up. Is there anything like that out there or am I going to have to get creative?

Hmm... yes. Quite true. My first customer is actually a really nice guy and if he wanted to he could have totally screwed me over but rather than do that he gave me quite a lot of very sound business advice, like for instance: ask for 50% up front, before you do any work. Sure they can still dick you around but at least you've got something. I would never do something 'all work upfront and no pay'. That'd be crazy. and... it doesn't matter how good your idea is, 'how are you going to market it' is the important question. Collaborating / Networking is something I've been thinking about... I'd like to get to know a few people over here that do the same or similar things I do (I'm near Loughborough, East Midlands).

Small businesses mainly but I've worked as a contractor for larger ones before. I have a registered limited company, I don't really see any point calling myself a 'freelancer', as I'm not. I agree about 'bigging up' - trouble is it's early days and I don't have a large portfolio.

Hello all, I'm fairly new to all this so please bear with me. First off, I'm a developer, not a designer (well, I can design but I'm a coder first and foremost). I've got a question about how to present yourself when looking for business. I tend to try to be honest with people and admit that 'it's just me', sure I have someone who does the books and sure some other friends and family help me out sometimes but basically I am 'it' right now. Looking around at the competition though, a lot of one man bands blatantly lie and pretend they're bigger than they really are. Sometimes I am tempted to put in the 'royal we' when writing copy... should I? I don't think so... but I'd like a second opinion. I can't help but feel a lot of people are put off by the 'size' of my company, which is a shame because I've worked for a lot of big companies in my past and know from experience: bigger does not always mean more professional. So, professional ways to present yourself as a 'one man band', without coming off as a lame weekend-warrior? (incidentally I am not, I work on this full-time ).

Nice vid, thanks. I think Google have been trying to address the issue of 'chasing search engines rather than users' for a long time. Personally, I'm glad they've got around to doing it. This will hopefully improve sites overall and put an end to the stupid 'keyword-stuffed, link-farmed, auto-magically-generated nonsense pages' that I see all over the place these days. I am a bit confused about one issue though - that of reciprocal links. Say you make and sell model subs, you have ten friends who all make and sell models of other things, which your customers (who like to assemble model kits) may well find interesting. Where is the harm in providing links to these on a 'links' page? Will it hurt the ranking of the site if each of those friends does likewise? Looking at it from an end-user point of view - I don't see the harm in this, I do see some benefit actually. Will be watching this with interest.

Crumbs... where did the 2k come from? What was the original agreement for payment exactly? How's it going now? I think that the law states you do not have to pay the full amount if you're not happy with the quality of work/service but... (and I'm stretching to remember this) I think it also says something about 'giving them a chance to put it right'. I would take some legal advice if I were you -even the 'free legal advice' from some free legal advice hotline would be a better idea than asking us lot - we are not lawyers. I suspect a lawyer will say that there was no contract but there was 'an understanding in good faith' that he would do X and you would pay him Y, hence you need to pay him an amount of Y but not the full amount and may be able to stop it there but you really need to ask them. I did use one of those free legal advisor myself once (dealing with a dodgy insurer) and actually the advice they gave me was spot on and worked like a charm. Try there. Oh and always be clear what the agreement is before starting work - and I would also say: make sure you see their references first! Lot of cowboys out there.

Interesting tips include: Stop chasing search engine algorithms and get back to chasing users. Stop focusing on 'optimal keyword density'. Kind of common sense but a good watch:

This, a thousand times this. What are they thinking?

I use metric, mostly. My Dad still does DIY in inches. Damn confusing, all those fractions.

Well, that wouldn't wash with my clients. Most of them use IE and that doesn't have a spellchecker, last time I checked. Yes it annoys me how the Americans lump us Brits in with them - there's no such thing as 'just English'.

That looks promising! Thanks. I'll give it a shot and let you all know how it goes.

Hello, I've been playing around with SilverStripe and MODx CMSes but I've hit a problem with the rich text editors on both systems (TinyMCE, for example). I can't find one that support British English. TinyMCE seems to let you select just 'English' which gives you a bastardisation of both British and American spelling. Anyone here come across the same problem? How did you solve it?

It does happen. For instance, I was about to bid on this beauty, until I noticed that they'd specified they had to have someone within 25 miles of Alton and until I read the bit about SAP integration and so on... I think that's probably a £20K site. They might not realise it yet though.

Ouch... Yes well, you mean the 'OTW DESIGNS' bit - I went for a 'cut from a steal plate' look, reminded me of the side of a ship or something or the blue fish thing? The fish was by specific request of the client -it's their logo and it's 'historic' too (was the logo on the side of the Type 7 or something, during the war). I just made it a tiny bit more '3D' with some shading. Thanks for the feedback everyone.

Those are some pretty cool backgrounds, bit heavy on the pic sizes - bearing in mind this is already a pic/vid heavy site. I deliberately strayed away from that sort of thing because a) my photoshop skills aren't that good and it's all about the submarine models - so I let them speak for themselves if you see what I mean? I do like the idea in principal though. Too late now of course - project is over.

Okay but why exactly? Can you tell me what's wrong with the current one (in your opinion)?

Hello, I made this site for a friend a while back, it was my first real 'solo' effort. The original site can be seen if you use the 'wayback machine', it looked ever so dated. Hopefully, mine's better but I'd like some constructive feedback (it's the only way to get better at what we do). So, here we go... OTW Designs. Let me know what you think. Good, bad, ugly... etc. Cheers.

I like the design overall but have to agree with this point - the billboard is too large and distracts from the more interesting content that a user might be searching for. Overall, nice though.

I see greens, whites, blues, all 'outdoor' colours IMHO. It looks clean and there's some good backgrounds. I see nothing wrong with the choice of fonts but what did you have in mind?

Hmm... if they are guilty of anything I would say it's more bad customer expectations management. Didn't you see proofs? How well spec-ed was the work? Were there lots of U-turns and meetings and so on or was it fairly cut-and-dry? It all sort of depends. I wouldn't say the design is terrible but it's no oil painting.