Myths about Freelancers
There are so many misconceptions about my line of work. Not the Web Development. The word ‘Freelance’ confuses many who don’t understand the concept, so I’m going to kill some myths for you:
It’s difficult to contact them – Why? They have the internet. They have phones. We may get signal issues from time to time if we go through a tunnel but mobile problems are nothing a visit to o2.co.uk or the Orange shop won’t fix. And generally they do answer calls, unless genuinely busy. And even then they will call you back.
Freelancing is risky – Admittedly there is no guarantee of work but if you don’t feel like you’re getting enough business from freelancing, keep a hold of your full time job too, or downgrade to a part-time job and balance the two. Where there’s a will there’s a way.
A freelancer won’t meet a deadline – Actually most are very professional and self motivated, so yes they do stick to deadlines. How would they make any money if they didn’t?
Freelancers aren’t reliable – Okay, so they don’t necessarily get up at 6.30 in the morning to commute, but freelancers understand the concept of reliability. And freelancers can balance their workload to suit the best times for them. The work will get done. It doesn’t matter when or where.
Freelancers results aren’t to the same standard – Aren’t they? Freelancers tend to become so once they have the skills and experience behind them that gives them the confidence to work on their own. Most spend money on bettering their skills. Otherwise the competition would trample them.
So don’t write a freelancer off based on misconceptions. If they weren’t good at what they did, they wouldn’t have a business. Freelancer doesn’t mean ‘slacker.’
10 (ish) Do’s and Don’ts of Web Design/Development
Just really something I’ve been noticing as I read tutorials for my new application I’m developing, the 10 (ish) things I see most (PHP) coders doing, which they shouldn’t in Web Dev/Design.
1. Flash is Evil, designed as a competitor to the web, not to be used on it. Try HTML5 for Video.
2. Don’t rely on external libraries to load your page, such as javascript/jquery, prototype, flash/actionscript, mootools, or any other libraries. If a user has Javascript disabled, your web page should still display fine.
3. In addition to the above, if you do use javascript extensively to display content (you really shouldn’t), please for the love of any omnipotent being, don’t use a Hashbang in your url’s. It’s horrible.
4. Don’t use <table> or <font> tags. They’re deprecated for a reason, in 1999 it was fine to use tables to lay out your content, but since the advent of CSS, it’s often easier now to use divs and classes, or even HTML5 Elements combined with CSS. (Switch To HTML5) The same can be said for adding styling to your text.
5. Don’t use <style>. It’s horrible practise. For a development site just to see how it looks and to tweak, it’s perfect, but in a production site it’s not really an option unless all other options are unavailable.
6. Don’t make your navigation cluttered. This one is more web design rather than web development. People need to be able to navigate your site without needing a phD in computing. If an 8 year old can find the “log in” link after less than a minute, you’re good.
7. Add a search feature. If someone can’t find something on your site, and there is no “Search” box, you’ve just lost a visitor. If all of your visitors are potential customers, then you just lost money. If you don’t know how to code, it’s easy, Google offers a free embeddable search engine for your website with CSE.
8. Don’t rely on images to display your most important content. I see web hosting companies doing this mostly, some text, then their price as an image. Your price is the most important part of the page, and if you display it as an image, someone with a slow connection will possibly not see it.
9. Don’t make a crap web design, simple as that. Don’t use excessive bright colours, Don’t use a million and one different fonts, no comic sans for the love of god, try to keep it uniform throughout. People like consistency.
10. Don’t spam it up with ads! If you have a sidebar, use it for content, not advertisements.
11a. PHP: Don’t use shorthand. It’s the same as styling using the <style> tag. <?= ?> tags only save a tiny bit of typing, so don’t be lazy, do it right.
11b. PHP OOP: Don’t edit the core controller!! If all of your controllers extend “Controller”, please don’t edit “Controller”.. Any errors you make in that file are passed to all the Controllers extending that class, and it makes debugging a pain. Please don’t tell users to edit the core “Controller” class if you’re writing a tutorial, it’s horrendously irresponsible.
In conclusion, just think it out before you do it, consider the implications of putting that there, and if you don’t know what you’re doing, I suggest you learn before trying to put a website/Web Design together. Paint and Notepad a web designer does not make.
Nothing I do…
Nothing I do is new, unique, or special. I like to make things. It’s no lie, I like to code things, make things, design things, I may not be very good at it, as some may attest (nor do I claim to be), but I like to do it nonetheless. I like to create, whether it is communities using various forum softwares, or innovative custom coded websites.
However innovative and custom these websites are, however, they’ve all been done before. This makes me wonder then, why do I bother? (Now, stay with me I know you’re probably thinking “Oh God, not this *again*, the sympathy vote”) If everything has already been done, such as for forums, most topics are already covered, most forum softwares already have everything – so much so that even creating plugins for that software to extend it has already been done, then what is the point of doing it again.
So far as website services are concerned, let’s take.. kwn.me as an example. The URL Shortening Service which my friends, Floris, Christopher and myself have built, from scratch, all custom coded, and we’re pretty damn proud of it. So when someone asks me “Why should I use this, and not bit.ly?“, it’s a pretty damn good question, and one which I always end up answering “Because I feel we can do it better“, or “We do things differently“. That thought (that it’s all been done before), coupled with that inevitable fact that simply, life gets in the way, I want to develop but more pressing things happen, such as a server goes down, or I simply lack the motivation, it really puts a roadblock in the way.
I often find myself bored, and wanting to create something, it brings me satisfaction. I enjoy learning, I enjoy the satisfaction of knowing that I made that – me, I can call it my own. However, when brainstorming up ideas, I always stumble upon this roadblock of “That’s all well and good, Mikey, but it’s been done before with <sitename.com>” and back I go to the drawing board, often getting frustrated and in the end not creating anything at all.
Anyway, it was just myself and my thoughts sat alone in the dark, and this came to me. (anyone else never know how to close a blog entry? I always have trouble, alas, a post for another day!)