eloquentlunacy

In these kind of situations, my first steps are: 1) Get a contract signed, whether it's a local client, remote client or even family/friends. If they refuse to sign one, move on. 2) For larger jobs, set out a 'road map' of multiple payments across the lifetime of the development. If payment or communication stops, halt all work and be sure to tell them the reasons. If they vanish into the woodwork and you never hear from them again, on bigger jobs (£1500 and above) threaten legal action. Anything smaller than that, it's not worth your while. What you've done isn't a write off - twice I've approached a new client with a pitch that contained much of the framework for a previous let-down, and they've gone for it. Make some additions, subtractions, content changes and bingo. Nothing you write, develop or design for is ever wasteful.

What's happened to the signatures? Been trying to apply one, but getting a database error!

The size of your site, future updates and whatever plans for global domination you have should steer your choice. It's no good bunging a three pager about cats in a CMS like Joomla, because it's like buidling a condo in the jungle when all you needed was plastic sheeting between 2 trees. List out the likely future demands, and we'll chip in with our own versions of what you need.

I've never been one for Smarty tempting - it's overly complicated, and splitting files across lots of includes means a headache keeping track of what's nested where. Love the architectural simplicity of Joomla templating - one master index that with some clever logic can become an intricate layout.

Keep it simple - kick off as a sole trader. Bear in mind that you as a person are responsible for business debts, not the business itself. If you're planning on a partnership with someone, then either a partnership agreement or LTD. There are legal pitfalls, but for gods sakes (as MMM states) get yourself an accountant - you might be able to fill in a tax return, but a decent accountant knows loopholes that exist wthin loopholes. Honestly, you will save a shedload of cash come end of tax year. In the old days as a London motorcycle courier, I lived with a German accountant: like a terrier with a rag-doll.

Posting information that the kids can actually use - after school clubs, sports results. A forum is a possibility, but obviously, you'd need heavy moderation.

I've had it the other way - most of my work comes from remote locations. If you've gone to the effort of placing yourself in a specialised niche, it's must easier to find work and more clients are willing to work remotely with you. If you're not a 'web designer' and rather a 'Joomla developer' you've thinned the herd out sufficently.

Photography - you'll often find me stalking anything that holds still long enough with a Nikon D800. It's a great way of unwinding. Mountain biking, the muddier the better. I work behind a desk - I don't want to DIE behind a desk.

Twitter's like every other social network - if you're not tweeting something I want to read, I'm just plain not going to follow you.

Core vulnerabilites get patched pretty fast across the board for most major CMS's - it's the third party developers you have to watch out for. If a CMS is widespread, you can guarantee that there's a group of individuals trying to break into it. Install Akeeba Admin Tools on a Joomla site, and have it report intrusion attempts - it's scary, scary stuff.

With Jason on this one - SEO should be viewed as a natural, organic wing of your marketing and not a cycnical attempt to game the engines. Being social is all there is to it, and not just social as in posting on FB, Twitter, Reddit yadayada - these are just outlets for your work. Think of your content as 'sociable journalism' - you're writing about things you love, discussing the thing you love across blogs, forums etc. Ecerywhere is an outet for your work. Stop chasing backlinks as the be all and end all; it's no fun and like climbing an unsubmountable cliff. Before you know it, those links are created the fun way.

You need a boilerplate template - something that's got a framework integrated. I've just shoehorned Foundation 3 into a Prestashop template - makes for a good starting point, as the canvas is reset to pretty much zero. Do a search for 'responsive boilerplate Prestashop template'

You might be better off looking up some coding tutorials - css3 gradient fills etc. Makes for an seo friendly button at the same time.

Simple answer is 'don't'. There's nothing you'll put together that Facebook hasn't got sewn up - and that's where everybody will go.

Try Perch - very lighweight

You might want to push Wordpress gently away for this one - as a blogging tool it's the best, as a CMS it's still a perpetual list of core hacks. IMHO - Joomla

Nowadays - I'd say no; with a caveat: it depends on how experienced you are. My first step is to bypass any kind of graphic editor (after the pen 'n paper planning) and go straight to designing in the browser. Most of what I develop now is responsive, and I find Photoshop tends to encourage me to overdesign. Usual process is: 1) Pen 'n paper (call it retro wireframing if it makes you feel more comfortable) 2) Layout developed in the browser with content king. 3) Only then will I consider graphic elements, with as much of these done with css as humanely possible. In the most part, as JPWD stated, individual elements such as icons and banners. Lets face it, by the time you've slaved over a template design in Photoshop, you might as well of designed in the browser and given your client a nice surprise, in the form of an interactive demo, rather than a static picture that shows nothing of the interactive elements other than margin notes. One thing that can be tricky is not providing the client with that initial image; I explain to them about content being the most important aspect, and make sure they get a copy of layout wireframes if required. @wellerweb - might not work for you, but I find generating a swatch of colours just as easy to implement.

Joomla is a thing of coded beauty None of this namby pamby hold you by the hand smarty templating multiple file rubbish; just leap in, code up a template structure.

Easy! Use a very basic CMS such as cushycms. All you need to do is wrap the content you want edited within tags, and to change it just log onto the cushy site, select your page, type, save, voila. Alternatively, a rebuild into one of the heftier cms's.

Can't find any reference to this CMS online - I think it may be 100% defunct, or an in house effort? If its a LAMP based site: Best choice would be a rebuild into either joomla or Wordpress, depending on the size of the clients site and their technical knowledge, including functionality required. If its .asp based, maybe something like umbraco for a CMS? Cost: couldn't even estimate without seeing the site. Why don't you post the link to the sites front end, so everybody can get a better idea of your best policy?

Repeat this mantra....."contract, charge, cleanup" Make it a strict contract stipulation right at the start that client screw ups whilst handling the CMS will be fixed at a set hourly rate. That said, I will go through sites every so often and clean up the more glaring abuses off my own back, such as lots of inline CSS. You can cure the rampant comic sans by limiting whichever text editor options are available. Leaving something like JCK editor with out of the box settings is the equivalent of saying "Have 20 fonts. Make us all dance".

Consider other CMS frameworks - you may be just as well off with a lighter weight solution, such as wolfcms.

I'd say odesk etc isn't a good guide. When I first started out, I went with odesk - what you see for rates isn't what would be charged in a real life client to client exchange. IMHO, anyway

Charge what you think you should be earning per hour to make a decent living, and the number of hours it will take to do an excellent job, not a middling or mediocre one. It's so easy to undercharge, yet incredibly difficult to raise your prices afterwards, and will lose clients. A website is a business investment - to be.honest, there's so much work available that its not worth working for people that don't respect or value the work that you do. If they can't appreciate this investment, find clients who can.

I'm a freelancer designer/dev, working from a home office. I'm considering taking things out of the home, due to being able to invest a large dollop of cash. I do have the option of either a business centre office or a streetside shop front; they work out at roughly the same cost. Has anybody else been in a similar situation, and did having that office make much of a difference as far as exposure, new clients and work ethic goes?