WebsiteWriter

Or apparently if you are diagnosed with OCD. Two days ago, I had to visit the emergency room of our local hospital due to a nervous breakdown where I was laughing uncontrollably and then crying. It turns out all these years that I thought I was motivated I was really suffering from obsessive compulsive disorder. I'm still waiting for an actual diagnosis but it seems to fit. I will add that I have written over a hundred posts here on the WDF in a few short days. I guess, i know why now... Man, I wish I could write that fast for clients. When I write for clients I find myself proofreading the copy hundreds of times before I can send it to them and it has made my life a living hell. I closed my business yesterday. It was a hard decision to make but until I get medicated for my conditions. I can't really afford to take on clients. I mean, life really throws you a curve ball sometimes... You know, I do hate on college sometimes. I was never a very social person. But I will say, I did enjoy the social aspect. I think that is all I can really recommend it for unless you desperately want papers.

You can speak for yourself, I play more video games than anybody I know. PS3, PS2, PC, Wii U, and I still love text based games. You've never played a game like Planescape Torment if you think "haveay graphics" are important. There is so much more to a game than graphics. Go back to COD. I mean, what are you? 12.

I was looking for book recommendations on PHP a while back and I was told by a few experienced coders that the PHP Manual website is all you really need and you'll be referring to it a lot anyway. It might save you money just to stick to the site. http://php.net/manual/en/index.php I myself prefer books to screen but then again I'm kind of an old fart around these parts. Or at least I feel old here.

I'm not sure if somebody has already pointed this out. But check your website on a smaller screen size in FireFox. I'm noticing that the slidehsow pops right out of your template when I view it in FireFox and I'm on a fairly large monitor. When I go fullscreen there is no problem at all but I never view any website full screen on this monitor. Thought I'd let you know.

Haha, well maybe the next time a client wants copy uploaded to their ancient HTML Table-Based nightmare I'll send you a private message and work something out with you? Man, I swear, some days I wish I would never see a table again.

Hey Mike, nice to meet you and congratz. Here I was perstering you through messages the other day. I didn't know. Here's to a happy New Year for you and your family. I only recently got engaged. No kids planned yet. But if there's one thing in life worth taking a break for then... That's family. Best wishes.

I agree with Bomb. These are not the kind of clients you want to be entertaining. But if you're desperate for cash and have the patience for this kind of client have at it. You've already set yourself up to be treated like dirt. They're now taking advantage of you so that they can save money and you'll probably end up doing everything yourself anyway while you're there. Only for almost nothing. With that said, I happen to know a guy charging over $500 for this kind of hands on lesson. He runs seminars in Toronto that teach business owners how to design their own websites in WordPress. If you're charging less than $50 an hour on this kind of hands on mentoring then there's no way it's worth your time to prepare, travel, correspond through email, get on the phone, teach them and then Inevitably... You will end up doing all of the work yourself anyway. Those are just my thoughts.

That's what makes these forums so fun to hang around in. There are bigger forums but this one is much more entertaining.

I have run into this problem with some clients. You have to ask yourself if it's worth your time. I would agree kree8or that with some clients it's a necessary evil but now I typically work on retainer agreements if the client needs this kind of support. The bottom-line is that your clients will treat you the way you want to be treated. You draw your lines and let your client know where they are. If they are truly professionals then they will understand if you're not willing to do management tasks for free. But if that's part of the services you provide you should include it in your fee. It's also a good way to build value for your clients. You can list some of the management tasks you do for them that others designers do not do. If you can save clients, time, money, and work then they are often willing to pay more. The thing is you can't just randomly tack on additional fees without upsetting existing clients. You have to draw your line before you invite them in the door. Or you risk losing that client forever. The interesting thing I have learned is that sometimes retainer agreements lead to a lot less work for you when the client doesn't feel that they are paying for a specific good or service so much as they are paying you to be available. I find myself getting on the phone and consulting with clients much more often. It's a nice change of pace and in the end it's much more profitable for my clients because they aren't afraid to get my professional opinion on whatever marketing ideas they have. I feel a lot closer to my clients when I'm on a monthly retainer. It's like being a partner in their business.

Hi Joe, welcome to the forums. I think so long as you bring value to the discussion they will love having you here. I've been fascinated by website design for well over half a decade now and I am still learning. It never ends.

Hi Alex, I love your profile picture. It looks a little like what my fiancee refers to as my "monkey face". In any event, welcome to the Web Design Forums where you will be sure to be entertained by sarcastic members and clueless spammers. I hope I lean more towards the friendly side of things. I'm new here too. But I'm loving it... It beats working anyway. Welcome.

You could probably improve everything but if you want the most "bang for your buck" then put 99% of your time on the header and logo area because that is likely going to be the first thing that everybody will see. I would look at how other similar websites have handled their logo and header and see if you can't do something similar. In any case, I have a simple process for when I am stuck on any one aspect of design and that is to work harder and produce a half dozen different variations of the task at hand. I do the same thing with body copy or headlines. Then you can select the one that you feel works best or ask the client to choose. If you ask the client to choose then make sure they only have two to three options to pick from or they will do one of two things: #1. Pick the ugliest one you have designed. #2. Ask you combine them all. I hope that helps. It sounds like you don't have a very clear process when you design. I would definitely suggest refining how you design websites so it's predictable every single time. My own design process is as follows: Client - What does the client want? Message - What message does the client want communicated? Reference - What have other designers done? Tools - What are the right tools for the job? Layers - Draw thumbnails, sketches, or variations. Select - Select and finish best ideas. Presentation - Present them to the client. You'll find that having a "process" in place will answer most of your questions. You will usually know how to find your own answers and when you don't maybe somebody helpful on the Internet will be able to. In the end, design is problem solving. It requires thinking.

I really think you need to learn some basic HTML skills. This isn't something that is hard to fix if you were able to provide the code to look at so we could help you out. I do however believe that you should rethink putting yourself out there as a true professional until you have mastered the basics of website designing and at least HTML/CSS. That will solve a lot of the problems you will run into in website design and it will save you a lot of grief from members. In most cases, unless it's an obscure problem you can solve it with Google or YouTube. If it's an obscure problem then members may have an idea how to fix it. In any case, you haven't shared any code with us so it's impossible to tell what will fix your problem. Though I'd imagine that adjusting the image to fit in image editing software or the width and height in the code would probably solve the problem for you.

Have to admit that I myself get confused by some of the differences between HTML, XHTML, and HTML5. I tend to stick to XHTML for most my own projects just because I am familliar with it. But I like how HTML5 has simplified some things like Doctypes. Thank you, for your reply. I just wasn't sure if I should be recommending HTML 5 yet. I find that for the most part my clients are the kind of people ho don't even know what HTML is much less HTML5 and their websites are ancient in Internet years. I cringe every time I am called in to upload new text to table based layouts because my clients somehow think that I should be able to control the exact whitespace and linespacing in their outdated website. I wish they would all use HTML5 for markup and stylesheets for styling. It would make my life much easier. I'm thinking of not even touching HTML at all anymore for clients. They can hire somebody to do that.

I just wanted to add one quick tip to this thread because it is really cool and has worked for me. If you don't know what long tail keywords are then take some time to learn all about them and start a WordPress blog for your design business. You would be amazed by how quick you can get ranked in the Google search engines first page for long tail keywords. For example, I recently wrote review for a new product I was testing out and it turns out it was so new that I was one of the few bloggers blogging about that one product. The next day, I get an email from the head of their social media marketing department. They are shipping me free stuff and they loved my blog post so much they shared it with their whole marketing team. I kid you not. That one little blog post on my blog is now the most popular post I have written on it. It got me free stuff and it's still getting shared. The best part, it's a product that my prime clients will be using so as the company promotes my article with follow. I may have to work on some back links to keep it in search results. But there you go. An amazing free ad for my services It's pretty cool.