Posted on November 7th, 2011 | Freelancing / Business, Web Design | 5 Comments »
There seems to be a different type of client for every situation in web design. Everyone seems to want something unique with their own ideas, and as a freelancer or solo-designer otherwise, it can be difficult to maintain consistency for each new project. Even more so, it can always be confusing when it comes to the best way to attract new clients and grow a freelancer’s client base.
What do clients want most from our services? What features or factors to our services should we advertise most, and how should we maintain our web design process? There seems to be no right answer. There are some designers who are mediocre who have far more business than some of the best designers who consistently study and maintain all of the best practices. There are many great designers that wonder why they’re struggling, despite their marketing efforts and skill set.
READ MORE...
Posted on October 25th, 2011 | Web Development | 3 Comments »
Continuing on with the mini-series “Getting Started with Web Development”, in today’s post I’m going to talk about some of the most popular and useful tools for web development. Of course, each type of web developer may need a separate set of resources, and each web developer within each niche will have different preferences as well. There’s no right or wrong when it comes to all of the various resources out there, and this post is meant to act as a starting point and introduction to some of the most common available.
READ MORE...
Posted on October 19th, 2011 | Web Development, Wordpress | 7 Comments »
WordPress has been the leader in blogging for years, and is fast becoming one of the leading platforms for standard content management systems as well. As WordPress continues on throughout the years, features evolve, more plugins and themes come about and with more capabilities, and we are always seeing more and better versatility among WordPress sites.
One of these newer trends we see is that many membership sites are now being built on WordPress. Since WordPress’s core already includes basic membership functionality in terms of a CMS and managing a blog, there are now many plugins and tools available from taking it from that level to a full-fledged membership site, for whatever type of membership site you need.
I had done a lot of research when trying to build Freelance Mingle, and everyone situation will have a different solution for membership plugins. Here are some of the best I found. In this post I’ll cover some of the best WordPress plugins for building a fully functioning membership site.
READ MORE...
Posted on October 4th, 2011 | Freelancing / Business | 6 Comments »
All new web designers, developers, or whatever are excited to take on their first client. I remember my first client years ago, and how ready I thought I was to take on the world. (Or at least the small startup I got to work on.) When I got more into the project, though, I realized I had a lot more to learn. I believe every person in this industry (freelance or not) learns the most from their first client.
What did you learn from your first client project?
What did the project entail, did you learn any hard lessons, or did you learn valuable lessons about managing projects or the work you like to do? Was it a success? A failure? How does it affect your work today?
This is an open thread post where I’d love to hear everyone’s experiences and thoughts on the subject. Please, no client details (we don’t want to burn bridges), just stories.
READ MORE...
Posted on September 27th, 2011 | HTML/CSS, Web Development | 5 Comments »
In part one of this series, we discussed exactly what web developers do, and debunked a few web development myths. We also briefly discussed all of the various niches that are a part of the profession. A web developer can choose to focus on anything from static websites (HTML/CSS), WordPress development, to mobile apps and website, and entire web applications. Many web developers try to be the “Jack of All Trades”, and others try to focus on one specialty only.
In this post, part two of the Getting Started with Web Development Series, we’ll look into how to decide on a particular niche, or niches, if you choose more than one. We’ll also look into the core of learning web development: the technologies you should start learning, no matter which direction you plan on going in.
READ MORE...
5 pages
