Weedy101

A quick reality check. Most new to running a business think they have to save money on advertising, (SEO is a form of marketing tool), and don't see it as an investment in futures. Therefore many new businesses for the first 3 years will be looking only at what they spend. By the end of the 5th year of trading, assuming their business survives that long, the vast majority then start to think like a business and look at real factors such as ROI, and standards such as business budgeting methods and practices. According to European Community figures there are an estimated 3.5k legitimate business startups in Europe per day that are expected to succeed beyond their first year. This represents a vast number of small businesses seeking cheap solutions for their SEO on an annual basis which would twist the figures to look like many more actual businesses using the cheap options on a regular basis. Especially when you consider that the EU figures are for businesses that are expected to survive their first year and well over half of all startups will never see the first year out.

Looks like a nice guide to design theory, I will have to do some reading

Here is an article you may find interesting, How to create different shapes with css. It describes the basics well and gives food for thought. Have a read and experiment with the many examples, you may well come up with something new as well as find your own hexagon solutions.

I have not used foxy form, however I do use email-me. It is customisable, can be multi-page or multi-part, and you get the content sent to your own inbox laid out in the order you want it too, plus you get to reply directly to the customer and not go through the third party to reply. First 100 per month are free so it can save you money if you are still building traffic too

This is probably almost entirely a hacking issue. This post in another thread has a link to a site that can help you sort and prevent problems like this. http://www.webdesignerforum.co.uk/topic/77199-creating-a-website-for-a-hotel-using-wordrpress/?p=473818

You could do agency work instead of freelance. One reason why companies would want to hire from abroad is they want new influences, another is they may be hoping to hire for less money. Most will simply be looking at the individual and their personal abilities, what they can bring to the company ect and will hire the individual regardless of origins. Plus of course equal rights means you are equally entitled to get the job as the next applicant is, so they need to be able to offer more than you to win the race. **Edit** Don't forget that one of your strengths is your willingness to learn, and your readiness to relocate is another.

Being an amateur probably means my vote don't count but I use eclipse as it is available on Win, Mac, and Linux; plus it is capable of being used for so many different things, not just the web. All you do is install an add-on or create your own.

Personally I wouldn't touch an add like that with a barge pole - it is unlikely to pay you what you are worth! Working with others will always give you more opportunities to learn fast. You can still spend loads of time doing your home studies and personal projects too which then gives you the best of both worlds and you can apply what you learn at work to your own projects. This represents another chance to experiment and expand your knowledge, so win win! Plus an agency will most likely pay you on a regular basis, whereas working at home you WILL have lean times with NO pay!

All three of my businesses have a clearly advertised policy of spammers and cold callers will be black listed. It states that - It doesn't stop the first contact, but it does see existing suppliers that fall foul of it trying to apologise rapidly.

I use Solar accounts, It's quick and simple with automated repeat invoicing, bank account reconciliation, and automated payment reminders for your bills too. You can even create custom invoices. There is a free trial, and the full version is just £174 + vat. Very reasonable for such a useful piece of kit.

Your quotation page is not the same style as the main page, it would be better if this was consistent.

Unanimous so far - 3 for me too. The others seem to be either to busy, of topic, or both. 3 works well.

If you use the search bar at the top left of the forums with the keyword 'tutorials' you will find dozens of threads with links to many tutorials and reference material to work from as well. I find that experimenting with other peoples projects is a great way to learn, 2 sites I use for that are sitepoint and codrops, and another good point of reference is smashing magazine.

One way of checking this is just people not bothering to complete the process is by adding an 'unsubscribe' link to the email which will take them to a page that when they click the confirm button will automatically delete the incomplete account. Then set up a cron job that checks if people have completed the account setup process or not after 3 to 5 day's. If they haven't re-send the email. Then in your sites security settings force a message to be displayed to anybody that has not confirmed their email address and block access to some of you best features until they do. One important point is that if you don't enforce the registration process fully it is much harder to stop bots or hackers etc from registering in order to abuse your site.

If it cost's you £3.00 per day to sit at your pc designing and coding in electric but you only get paid £5.00 a week for that work you are better off going for a walk and giving £1.00 a day to a homeless guy! Why would you want to work for those silly rates, devaluing yourself and your work into negative equity?