Making Websites

Using an online calendar system - you might want to consider it!

2008-05-01T11:31:00.006-04:00

I am going to tell you about something which has helped hugely in organizing my business and my life in general. Before I do, I'll warn you: if you are concerned about using Google's free applications, you don't need to bother reading further. I understand those concerns, and I intend to do more research on them. But for now, personally, I'm not worried.

I knew of the existence of Google Calendar, but didn't feel the need for a new kind of calendar, especially a digital one. However, as I've mentioned here before, I'm on a mission to create an office which depends neither on paper nor on my hard drive, by using online applications wherever possible, so when Google Calendar was recommended in the interesting book Lifehacker: 88 Tech Tricks to Turbocharge Your Day by Gina Trapani, I decided to check it out.

For years I've kept myself organized using various paper calendars, and I've never missed any important event for lack of keeping track of my obligations. I actually really like keeping track of stuff on paper, and until my recent push, have avoided digitizing things that could be kept on nice, old-fashioned, tactile, simple, paper.

So what's so great about an online calendar, and about Google Calendar in particular? Why have I switched completely and am now enthusiastically sharing my recommendation? I can probably best answer that with a list of reasons.

I use my calendar for a lot more than I used to. Because it's so convenient and efficient to use, I now keep track of a number of obligations and events on it that I used to keep track of in my head, or in numerous and various other places. I really have centralized all of my obligations that are tied to calendar dates. More about how this works below.
Google Calendar allows me to set up events so that they automatically repeat. This is perfect for things like (1) yearly large debits to my checking account that I don't want to be surprised by, such as web hosting payments; (2) monthly bills for companies that don't offer anything except for U.S. Mail billing, which I might miss when travelling; (3) weekly events like my Cuban Salsa dance classes; (4) birthdays of family and close friends, which now appear every year.
Google Calendar's system of reminders by email is extremely useful to me. Now, I'm aware that for many people, reminders sent by email are not desirable or effective, simply because their inboxes are a mess already, and the resulting information bottleneck doesn't allow for email to be used in this way. This is not the case with me. I have an excellent spam filter system, and I take care of my incoming email so that it is not at all a problem. So, receiving reminders at specific intervals for events on my calendar that I might forget is extremely useful. I only receive reminders I specifically request, and I delete all of these emails as soon as I'm sure I won't forget the event, so they are nothing but helpful.
My calendar is available anywhere where I have a computer and an Internet connection. This has not proved to a problem even when I spent 5 weeks in a small remote town in Mexico - there were Internet cafes on literally every block - and I don't plan on being further from civilization than that any time soon.

A good example literally just occurred. I just checked my email, and there's a message from the company who provides my fax service, saying that they need a new debit card number. I went to their site to provide that, and saw that they're going to charge my card again next February 19. Now, there is no way in the world I'm going to remember that date. So I took 60 seconds to access my Google Calendar, add a note on that data and set it to repeat yearly. I don't need a reminder of it, so I didn't set any reminders, but it will show on my calendar that week and I'll know what that funny charge is that my bank shows for a few days before the payee is displayed.

I'm very pleased with the way this is working for me. If you had told me a year ago that I would be using an online calendar on a daily basis, I would have been amazed, because my attitude was truly Hutterite on this question. But the truth is, the more I'm able to free myself from my notebooks and pads of paper and file cabinets, the more time I get to spend away from my office, say, on the beach in that remote town in Mexico. As a psychologist once told me, people can change, but we have to be very motivated!

Notes on One E-Commerce System

2008-04-24T09:39:00.003-04:00

For the small web design shop, getting asked to produce an e-commerce site is often somewhat of a challenge. There are countless ways it can be done, and sometimes just choosing the right shopping cart software, payment gateway and merchant account can be a big job.

For very small shops, I definitely recommend considering PayPal's e-commerce solutions. Once the site owner has a PayPal Business Account, you can literally have an online shop up and running in a matter of hours.

For the larger projects, I have yet to settle on a single solution, but I've been reasonably pleased with a system that was chosen by one of my clients, Web Marketing Magic. I was initially turned off by the "internet hustle" feel to their web site, as well as by the poor design of the pages, but the software itself has always worked well for us. And in the couple of years that we've been using it, it has improved noticeably on both of those counts.

WMM is a hosted product which provides not just a shopping cart, but a range of marketing features, including an email database and autoresponder system. There are several packages providing different feature sets; we've been using the somewhat expensive Pro package because of our need to provide digital delivery of goods.

WMM has generally worked well for us. Because it was not my decision to use it, I have always been tempted to try and convince my client to try a set of other solutions instead: a PayPal shopping cart, Payloadz, and Constant Contact or MailChimp. But my client is convinced that the integration WMM offers between its shopping cart and autoresponder system is crucial to the sales process, and she may turn out to be right.

Is the customer always right?

2008-04-21T07:59:00.004-04:00

Among the discussions on the web development business I've been part of, one very common one revolves around a statement like this: "My client wants such-and-such for his web site. I know it's a bad idea, but he's the client, so I have no choice."

In these discussions, some web designers/developers* insist on the old adage "The customer is always right" and believe that carrying out whatever orders the client might give is the highest form of good customer service. They consider themselves to be tools used by clients to create the client's own vision.

Others, myself included, think that an important part of our job is giving good advice about what constitutes an effective, good quality web site.

I don't simply comply with every request. I do consider that to be the default setting; the person writing the checks is, at least in one sense, the boss. But presumably I have been hired in order to take advantage of my knowledge of good web design as well as my simple ability to produce a web site. Ultimately, I consider my job to be to meet the client's actual goals, which typically are to have a web site which works well in the large sense; the site does what it's supposed to do: attracts business, provides information, contributes to the company's good reputation, etc.

So if the client has an idea for his web site which he thinks is really cool, but which I know won't work well for a lot of users, or will be disliked by most of them, I don't just shrug and go about implementing it. Instead, I initiate a conversation with my client in which I explain why I feel that their idea is not going to contribute to the success of their web site. I make sure he understands the potential problems and down-sides to his idea. We discuss it. And then, I let him make the decision.

Often, the client will take my advice, and get a better web site for himself. Sometimes he'll continue to insist on his idea. When it's the latter, it can be frustrating for me. Yes, I'm getting paid, but it's still a bummer to have to produce a web site which is less than good quality when I have the ability to do otherwise. It's just much more satisfying to produce a good site than a mediocre one. In some instances, I've even felt it necessary to remove my credit from the web site over issues like this.

It's not always easy to negotiate these issues, but I stand firm in my belief that a good web developer is not just a box of crayons for the client, but a box of crayons with years of knowledge and experience.

And by the way, "The customer is always right" is, of course, not a universal truth. It doesn't take much experience or imagination to come up with a situation in which a customer is most definitely not right. (How about "I want everything in your store for free"?) The expression has a purpose, but it isn't meant to be taken literally, but rather understood as, "A good business does everything possible to please the customer." Not as catchy, but a lot truer and more useful.

* Re. "Web designer" and "web developer": I continue to use these terms interchangeably to refer to a person whose job it is to plan, design, code, and produce web sites.

QuickBooks Online, get with it!

2008-04-17T10:09:00.002-04:00

In the ongoing effort for a "virtual" and "hard-drive-less" web development business office, I've been using QuickBooks Online, as I mentioned in an early post. It's working well for me, and so a client and I looked into setting it up for her "virtual office".

We were 95% sold on using it from the start, and so were very disappointed to find out that they don't support it for any Macintosh browsers! My client is a Mac-only person these days, and though we're aware of the workarounds for installing Windows programs on a Mac, they're much too involved to undertake for only this reason.

So we need to go back to the drawing board and look for different software. What a huge mistake on the part of the makers of QuickBooks Online. From what I know of what it takes to build a web site which works well in all browsers, it wouldn't require much for them to make QuickBooks Online ready for Mac Safari or Firefox.

Have they not yet heard that the whole point of the Web is that it's platform-independent?

The Buena Vista Operating System Club

2008-04-12T11:10:00.005-04:00

This week my new Dell Inspiron 1525 laptop arrived, and I've been busily setting it up all week. The laptop is beautiful and works great, but that's not what I wanted to discuss here. Rather, this is my first Windows Vista machine, and I wanted to describe my experience so far.

I was scared of going Vista, having heard plenty of negative stuff. The bad reviews all seemed to center around three complaints:

"It's hard to get used to Vista because so many things are different from Windows XP."
"Vista's User Account Control (UAC) is constantly nagging me to allow this or that."
"None of my peripherals work and there aren't even drivers for them."

Now, I'm no big fan of Windows or anything, but I have to be honest here: I have none of those complaints. Addressing them one by one:

Yes, things are in different places, but it has never taken me more than a few seconds to figure out where to find something.
Yes, User Account Control does ask my permission to do certain things, but it's definitely not as frequent as the Apple TV commercials make it sound! I'm aware of the importance of the security features, and it just isn't that big a deal.
Here's how difficult it was to hook my (6-year-old) printer up to my Vista machine: I leaned over and unplugged it from my old machine, plugged it into the Vista machine, Vista found and installed the drivers, and I was able to print. No problem with either of my external hard drives, either.

My most important programs (Adobe Dreamweaver and Fireworks) installed without a single problem.

It doesn't hurt that Vista is visually so much prettier than earlier Windows OSs either.

I'm just 3 days into this, but overall, everything works, most things are easier, and I'm enjoying it.

A "hard-drive-less" office

2008-04-11T23:36:00.004-04:00

I've been making a focused effort to make my office not only "paperless", but also, "hard-drive-less". In other words, my goal is to have almost all of my systems and data reside on the Internet rather than on my hard drive. I say "almost all" because I don't think it's quite possible to do this 100%. For example, I have software which has to live on my hard drive; - Dreamweaver and Fireworks are the main culprits. But as long as I own the licenses and have the CDs and/or rights to the programs, I don't even have to depend completely on my hard drive for them. And I still have some paper files, although I've reduced them by about 2/3.

The following are some of the main programs and services which are allowing me to do this. Quite a few of them are Google-provided; whether or not I should be nervous about trusting so much to Google is a question I'm not going to delve into here, although I have to acknowledge that it's a fair question.

1. GMail - by far the smartest, most convenient, easiest, keeps-me-most-organized email program I've ever used. I've used quite a few, and email is important to me. Its nearly flawless spam-filtering system, "tags", and searchability are just a few of the things I love about it. And I was able to access my email on computers all over Mexico in less than 30 seconds.

2. Google Docs. I use it for information, not for documents that have to look perfect - but I have piles of information to keep track of, and the search function makes finding anything almost instantaneous.

3. Google Calendar. I didn't even really believe that I was going to be able to give up my paper calendar, but I actually have. And my paper calendar never emailed me reminders about upcoming appointments and events!

4. Online banking.

5. Highrise by 37 Signals, a wonderful contact manager where I know keep all of my personal and business contact information. Amazingly, for less than 250 contacts, it's free! Although I can see the wisdom of that business model, since after getting familiar with it I've already signed a client up with the paid version.

6. Backpack and Basecamp, also by 37 Signals. I'm still in the process of choosing between these two intranet-like applications for my own business and for a client's business. I really like both.

7. QuickBooks Online. Good old QuickBooks, but resides online and is accessible anywhere. It's not cheap, but bookkeeping is too important to skimp on, in my opinion.

The "nameplate page"

2008-04-03T15:12:00.006-04:00

A couple of weeks ago, a client asked me to correspond with the graphic designer he had been working with. When the designer and I talked, he mentioned some information about me that he had obviously gotten by Googling my name. It wasn't anything that I minded him knowing, but it did remind me that anybody who does this will find out various things about me: that I wrote a book, that I have several web design-related web sites, and that I have made lots of posts on certain web design newsgroups, some of them not entirely serious.

So recently, when I read Lifehacker: 88 Tech Tricks to Turbocharge Your Day by Gina Trapani, I paid attention to her section on creating what she calls a "nameplate page". The idea is that you can take charge, at least to some extent, of what Google presents to the world in connection with your name. In addition to being circumspect about what you post under your name online, you might want to post a brief web site at a domain associated specifically with your own name. The goal is to have that page come up first, or at least high, in Google searches for your own name, so that curious searchers will be more likely to be given information and links that you have chosen than to find random sites where your name is posted.

It seemed like a good idea, so I now have a little "digital business card" at www.pattyayers.com. I already owned the domain, so it didn't cost me anything, and only took a few minutes. Whether it helps to maintain my sterling reputation remains to be seen!

Customizing Firefox's Search Bar

2008-03-13T17:57:00.003-04:00

Something else I discovered about Firefox: adding other searches to the Google search field in the toolbar. I had no idea there was anything but Google to choose from, or that you can add lots of other searches and sites. Just click the down-arrow next to the "G", which is to the left of the search box, to see a short list of other sites which can be searched quickly right from your toolbar. And, if you click "Manage Search Engines" at the bottom of the list, you can customize your list and add search engines and popular lookup sites from a list.

Knocking email as sensationalism

2008-03-11T12:21:00.004-04:00

I've noticed an interesting trend. Several business-advice books I've read lately have made a point of suggesting, sometimes pretty strongly, that to improve productivity, we should all steer clear of using email so much. Don't ever check it first thing in the morning! says one book. Try to use "social networking sites" instead! says another. Other books have emphasized what a time-waster email can be.

Personally, I disagree. I should qualify this right away by saying that this may be because I'm unusual in that I've always been careful in how I handle email. I think I was aware since way back in the misty, distant days of my Internet use, about 12 years ago, that the Internet in general, and email in particular, are powerful and potentially dangerous, and I've always treated them with respect. I've always done everything possible to avoid spam, avoided mailing lists, and discouraged unnecessarily chatty email correspondence, to name a few examples. I've never made it my life, as some people seem to, but pretty much have always been the boss of it.

Also, I'm pretty conscious of how I use my time in general, and so not susceptible to being randomly distracted by the receipt of emails during my work time.

So email has never gotten the best of me. It's never wasted my time or distracted me from more important work, and I don't believe I've ever used it thoughtlessly in such a way as to detract from a business relationship.

And I question the email-avoidance advice that seems to be common these days, because it seems to me that the problem isn't the tool, but how it's used. Email still seems to me to be an excellent means for certain types of communcation, used with care.

Actually, I suspect that those authors gave that advice partly just for the shock value. What a radical thing to say! Can it be true? People read it, and then pass on the revolutionary concept to their friends, providing lots of buzz-marketing for the book.

Using Google Calendar's "Notifications"

2008-03-07T15:26:00.002-05:00

I've recently started using Google Calendar. I've always been the old-fashioned paper-calendar type, but I decided to give this a try, in my ongoing effort to create a business with a truly portable office.

Although I kind of miss my paper calendar, which doesn't have to be logged into, can be scribbled on at will, etc., there's one aspect of Google Calendar which has begun to be very useful to me: "Notifications".

Using Notifications, I can set up the program to send me an email a few hours, or a day or a few days, before each "event" on my calendar, as a reminder. This is useful not just for appointments, but for the type of thing I ordinarily handle by using lots of sticky-notes taped up around my office - reminders of things that need to be attended or prepared for in the future. For example:

hosting accounts which are going to automatically renew for the years (and hit my bank account with a sizable charge)
transfers from my PayPal account to my bank account, which take 3-4 days, which I need to confirm
my automatic computer backup, which I'd like to not have interrupt me in the middle of doing something on the computer

Of course, it's also handy for appointments, deadlines, and remembering to get to salsa dance class! But using it for less traditional reminders is even more useful, since it really is effective in clearing my life of the multiple small paper notes that I use for this type of thing.

As far as adding volume to my email in-box, this doesn't bother me at all, simply because (1) my in-box isn't out of control, (2) this is useful enough to warrant using email to get my attention, and (3) I just read and delete the reminders, so they aren't much of a burden.

A radical experiment: closing my email

2008-02-28T12:17:00.002-05:00

I've just finished reading a couple of books about "productivity", and there's always a lot of talk about how we handle email. Since email is really not a problem for me, I didn't do anything with most of the advice offered.

The one recommendation that I did decide to try, though, I'm really pleased with. And it's ridiculously simple! I decided to try closing my email window (I use GMail, so for me this is a browser window tab, but for others this would apply to an email program) for periods of time while I'm working.

Although it felt weird at first to not be connected directly to my email at all times, I'm starting to really like those periods of time - they're very relaxing, and it's much easier to focus on work without interrupting myself every time an email comes in, which I seem to be compelled to do once I know it's there.

When I add to this a Pandora (www.pandora.com) radio station playing jazz, suddenly my work environment is much more peaceful and pleasant, and yes, more productive.

Setting up client domain registrations and hosting accounts

2008-02-26T09:59:00.002-05:00

A friend who has just recently started in the web development business asked me what I do about client domain names and hosting accounts - who signs up for the them, and those name they are put in. I thought I'd repeat my answer here, in case it's helpful to someone else.

I've developed a system over the years which works well for me, so I'll explain it and the reasons for it.

I handle the two - domains and hosting - differently.

For domain names, first and foremost, I never register a client's domain under my name or business name. I don't think there's any reason to, and don't think it's in the best interests of the client, since he should always have control over his own domain name.

if the client already has his own domain names registered, I just ask for the login information for his account with the domain registrar, so that I can access the account to set the name servers. There is seldom any other reason for me to access that account. If the client needs a new domain name or names registered, and is comfortable doing it himself, I encourage that, but try to influence his choice of registrars, since I've found that some are much easier to deal with than others. I also ask him to be sure to make a note of his login information and give it to me.

If the client prefers that I do the registering, I'm glad to do it. I make sure I know what name, address, email address, etc., the client wants to use, as well as getting his credit card number, and put both the account and the domain name entirely in his name.

I handle hosting differently, for two reasons. (1) There is a more pressing reason to have the hosting account in my name: I will need to contact the host at times, and most hosts will not deal with a third party unless that party is authorized in some way by the person who owns the account. Of course, my client can inform the host that I am authorized to make decisions about the account, but when there's something urgent that needs to be done, that can be a real pain. (2) Legally/ethically, having the hosting account in my name is a lot different than having a domain name in my name; a business can depend entirely upon a domain name, whereas a particular hosting account isn't mission-critical. As long as the client has a backup copy of his own web site files, if the web developer were to be hit by a bus, he could carry on with his business without any serious problems.

A third reason for putting hosting accounts in my name is that at times, I have many client hosting accounts to look after, and it's much easier for me to have them all at one host under my name.

That's my system. By the way, the hosts I use for almost everything are HostMySite.com and CrystalTech.com, and the domain registrar I use is GoDaddy.com.

Why I sometimes turn down the opportunity to submit a proposal

2008-02-19T11:24:00.003-05:00

I turned down the opportunity to prepare a proposal for two different clients yesterday, so I thought I'd write about that today.

This isn't unusual for me, and I definitely don't think it's a bad thing. But to some who are just starting out as small-business/independent web developers, it might sound strange. If I stated this on the online forums I frequent, I can almost promise that there would be a post or two from people eagerly asking that the clients be referred to them.

Some of my readers may be of a mind to turn down potential web development jobs as well; if you are, you already understand. But for those who don't, here's my explanation.

First and foremost is the fact that, after ten years in this business, I have found that I spend a lot of time talking to potential clients, gathering information, "selling" my services, preparing proposals and figuring estimates. I find this to be hard work, and it isn't my favorite type of work by any means.

Some of this work results in paying jobs, sometimes in good paying jobs. But the percentage that do result in good paying jobs is too low for my liking. Whether or not I could improve that percentage is a subject I'm not ready to tackle here, but I will say that I do the very best I can to get every single contract that I can, assuming that it's appropriate for my skills and strengths.

But, appropriate for my skills and strengths - that's crucial, at least to me. I don't enjoy being in the position of having "won" a contract, and finding myself faced with work that I need to subcontract out to others. I find that a lot of web developers seem to think that subcontracting is the answer to all potential problems with a web development project, and that there's no reason to shy away from any contract, since the talent to complete it is undoubtedly readily available for hire.

But I don't want to supervise web projects. I don't want to be the one whose job is to constantly interface between the client and the people who are having all the fun doing the design and coding. Again, in the immortal words of Sly Stone, different strokes for different folks, and that might be somebody else's idea of a fun job, but it isn't mine.

So, when it becomes obvious to me that I'm not likely to be able to handle all, or at least most. of the actual web development work myself, that's one time when I am likely to pass on submitting a proposal.

There are other reasons I sometimes pass on a project as well. Another is when a client, and/or his project, set off warning lights for me. This might be because the potential client sounds like he is not serious about hiring a web developer at reasonable rates, or it might be because I can tell that the web site production process will be "managed" by a committee, which I've found to be a formula for an unhappy project. Unfortunately, not-for-profit organizations frequently fall into one or both of the above categories.

There are other types of potential clients I've learned to pick out from a distance and avoid as well, for example, the get-rick-quick-on-the-Internet-wannabe. These are people who think that a web site plus a small amount of fiddling with search engine positioning will create for them a goose that will begin laying golden eggs into their bank account shortly after I launch their site.

The truth is, I've found that by sorting through potential clients carefully, I can put my energy into the potential projects which actually have potential for both the client and me, and avoid wasting time on those which don't.

Working from Mexico, continued

2008-02-09T11:22:00.000-05:00

I think I can say now, after about a month of running my businesses 100% from Internet cafes in Tulum, Mexico, that it has been a successful experiment. My web design business is at a low setting; most work is waiting until my return. But I have been communicating with new clients, answering requests, and sending urgent work to colleagues to handle temporarily. My other business, WebDevBiz.com, I have been able to run very smoothly from here.

A few small glitches:

Mexican computer keyboards. Not only are they often ancient and decrepit in the Internet cafes of Tulum, but the keys are arranged strangely. Characters like the at sign (@) are notoriously located in strange locations, requiring a the use of a special key labelled to access. And, I have encountered several keyboards which are completely missing an @ character. How people are supposed to use the Internet and never use that particular character is a mystery to me! The keyboard I am currently typing on seems to have no apostrophe - this is why I keep writing I am instead of the contraction for that phrase! Neither can I find double quotation marks. Despite all of this, I believe I have carried on respectable email correspondence during the past month!
Browsers are set to display all of their menus in Spanish, and I have not (no apostrophe or I would use a contraction there) been able to figure out how to switch them to English. Similarly, many sites such as PayPal load with all menus in Spanish. (This can easily be changed, I have discovered since, but I was not aware of that initially.) With my rudimentary Spanish I have been able to get by, with the exception of one goof the other day: while attempting to transfer funds from PayPal to my bank account, I instead withdrew funds from my bank account and deposited them in my PayPal account. Doh!
I did have to get very good at deleting all personal data before leaving each Internet cafe, but this is not difficult, especially since most of them have Firefox installed. (On a totally separate sidetrack: my site statistics for WebDevBiz.com today showed, for the first time, that more visitors are using Firefox than Internet Explorer, which seemed significant!)

When I return to Mexico with the intent of carrying on business, I intend to bring a laptop and either get my own Internet access one way or another. Obviously, this would solve the problems above, which are entirely due to using public Internet access.

Along with a good phone service, it looks as if I might have everything I need to live and work from Mexico for parts of the year. Que alegre! :-)

Working from a remote location

2008-01-13T14:58:00.000-05:00

I´m posting this from an Internet cafe in Tulum, Mexico, a little town on the East Yucatan coast where I´m working and studying for about a month. I´m really pleased that I´m able to carry on most of my work even from this location. Just about everything I need to do work-wise can be done over the Internet from any location where I have access - I´ve been purposely setting things up this was for some time now, becoming much less dependent on paper in my office, or even on my own hard drive.

So I´ll leave that with you as a tip in case you plan to be away from your web development business office for any length of time - plan ahead so that you can carry on work from a remote location.

Business networking groups

2008-01-08T08:46:00.000-05:00

When I first started my web design business eight years ago, I was helped a lot by joining a business networking group.

I stumbled upon my group when I joined the local Chamber of Commerce. On the desk of the person I talked with at the Chamber was a flyer for a "leads group", which apparently was a bunch of people who met regularly to help each other promote their small businesses. I had never heard of this type of organization before, but being eager to do all the right things in getting my business up and running, I attended a meeting. I loved it, and it soon became an important part of every week to get up especially early on Wednesday mornings and get to the Chapel Hill Leads Group meeting.

Over the course of a couple of years, I was a regularly attendee. The obvious benefit was an increase in business. Networking works! Each week we each would give a very brief (30 seconds!) presentation on our business, and as the weeks passed, we got to know one another's offerings very well. It became only natural to refer friends and acquaintances to the businesses of my fellow Leads Group members, and they did the same for me. I also did business directly with a number of other members, producing their web sites.

But I was benefitted in other ways as well. The group became a source of information on running a small business for me. Making the short presentations each week (and occasionally longer presenations, when it was my turn) helped my confidence. And I gained friends.

Because this group gave my business such a boost, I always recommend that other people starting out in the web development business try out a networking group. My only caution is this: not all groups are alike, by any means. Some are quite rigid and formal, literally requiring members to make referrals, which to me is ridiculous, since in our group, those referrals flowed naturally from the knowledge and respect I had for the other business owners. Some groups are just a lot less fun than the one I joined; I wouldn't have been able to keep up attendance as long as I did if my group had been as dull as some others I've attended.

So if you do want to explore this route, I recommend visiting more than one business networking group, if there are several available in your area. See if you can find one that suits your style. And once you do find one that you like at least a little, definitely give it three or four meetings to begin to work. Business networking takes time and effort, but it really can produce good results in bringing clients to your web design business.

Are you entrepreneur material?

2008-01-04T18:50:00.000-05:00

It's a new year, so I thought I'd start back at the beginning and write something about getting a small home business started.

If you've been reading articles and books on starting your own "micro" home-based business, you've probably heard this advice before, but it's well worth heeding: before you quit your day job and go out on your own, give some serious thought as to whether you have the type of personality and makeup needed to be an entrepreneur.

Not everyone is cut out to work for themselves; at least, it's going to be a constant struggle for some, while for others, many things will seem to be second nature.

Here's the list of traits, tendencies, and strengths that comes to mind:

Are you good at "managing yourself"? Do you work well independently, organizing projects and tasks, getting started on them, and finishing them? Or do you flounder, get distracted, or lose energy when there aren't external structures ordering your time?
Are you able to work very hard, sometimes long hours, within reason? Can you pace yourself, and take care of your own mental and physical health so that you stay productive? Or are you more inclined towards extremes, and might tend to either swing towards laziness or else complete burnout?
Can you think creatively? When obstacles appear in your way, are you able to look at your various options and still keep your eyes on the goal? Or are you more comfortable diligently "staying the course" which has already been set out for you?
Do you require the company of other people to stay energized, or can you work alone for many hours at a time?
Are you disciplined enough to get out of bed every morning in time to be available to answer your office phone during business hours, without having someone forcing you to?
Are you the kind of person who is able to, and even enjoys, setting goals and keeping your eyes focused on them, while ensuring that you take all of the small steps needed to achieve those goals?

Some of these traits can certainly be developed, but it's wise to be aware of the need for them, and if you're lacking in any, consider how you can improve, train, or educate yourself to be stronger in those areas.

Try something new on a low-pressure project

2007-12-26T17:50:00.000-05:00

I tend to think that, in doing work for clients, it's best to stick with techniques that you know very well, if at all possible. Often it's unavoidable that we need to learn something new for a client project, but that can be a stressful way to learn, with your meal ticket depending upon it working out well and getting done on time.

But it's important to keep expanding your skills, so here's my Suggestion of the Day. Once in a while, try something completely new to you. But don't do this on a client project if you can help it. Try the new thing on a low-pressure no no-pressure project, like one of your own web sites. It's usually fun to figure out how to do something entirely new to you when you can do it in "play mode" rather than "work mode".

Consistency and Changeability

2007-12-19T10:09:00.000-05:00

I'm really liking certain aspects of the web sites I've been building over the past few months. I'm happy with the visual appearance of most of them, but what's more pleasing to me are two aspects I'll call Consistency and Changeability, for lack of better terms. (If there are more accurate or better words for these things, I'd be glad to hear about it in comments to this blog!)

By Consistency, I mean that the pages have a design with common sections that do not change from page to page, or change only in minor ways, making "paging" (clicking from page to page) a pleasant experience. Assuming the server is performing well, the pages load quickly and these common sections remain in exactly the same position from page to page, providing almost the same feel as as frames site. I also mean that text styling matches throughout the site.

By Changeability, I mean that it's easy to change many parts of the site, because of the Consistency factor above, and because the underlying code is written to support these two goals. The use of server-side includes is central to this approach. I sometimes almost don't want to let on to my clients how easy it is to change a navigation bar or sidebar or footer. It is really easy, but it's easy because I've spent years learning how to make it easy, and because I've spent hours planning their site so that these things will be easy!

There are a lot of techniques and tactics, large and small, which make up my system for a consistent, changeable site. Por ejemplo, I definitely favor vertical navigation bars over horizontal navigation bars. Because of the nature of a web page, a vertical navigation bar is much more flexible in terms of the addition or subtraction of links or buttons, whereas with a horizontal navigation bar, there will always be major issues with the number of links/buttons, the length of their actual text, and how this fits (or wraps) in different browser windows.

These days, I'm enamored of a web page and web site design that is simple, orderly, and flexible, not not necessary on the surface, visually, but in its essential design and code. They're so much more pleasant to work with, and the accompanying client work is accordingly more pleasant as well!

My Digital Filing System for Client Work

2007-12-15T10:45:00.000-05:00

I believe that it's absolutely essential to be extremely organized with the digital files related to a client's web site. I use a very specific system for ordering these files. It's exactly the same for every site, and I'm pretty disciplined about putting documents where they belong. Like any kind of organizational scheme, this might take me a little time, but it most definitely saves
me a lot of time.

One of the main reasons this system is set up the way it is, is so that I can upload a site's source files and other backup files to the server as an extra backup. (See my recent post, A System for Backing up Client Website Files.)

My system might seem complicated on first glance, but I've thought it through carefully!

I really recommend that you develop your own system that makes sense to you, and then stick to it. Here's mine.

As soon as I sign on a new client, I create a digital filing system for them. On my hard drive is a folder, web sites. Inside that folder is a folder for each client. Say I've just signed on a client whose site will use the domain name ethelmertz.com. (I've just discovered that there is a real site with that domain. I have nothing to do with it - I just like to use Ethel Mertz and Fred Mertz as fake names for lots of things, for some reason. Feel free to visit it yourself, though - it looks cute.) Here's what the hierarchy of folders will be:

web sites - Holds all of my web site client files.

ethelmertz - Holds all files for the client whose site is EthelMertz.com.

site - Holds all files which get uploaded to the server for EthelMertz.com.

external - Holds all of the files which are not part of the web site itself.

docs - Holds documents which aren't site content, but which aren't private.

cont - Holds documents which are site content.

pngs - Holds graphic .png source files.

grfx - Holds non-.png graphic files.

arch - Holds site files which are archived, not currently used.

index.htm - This would be the actual site index file, to show the location of site root.

priv - Holds site-related docs I don't want to store on the server because they're private.

The folder external is named with a leading underscore because I want it to float at or near the top of my alphabetized list of folders.

The reason external is located within the folder site is that I upload it to the client's server space as an extra backup. (It is password-protected.) The folder priv is not uploaded to the server, and that's why it is located outside of the folder external.

Displaying HTML code on your page: escaping special characters

2007-12-08T10:29:00.000-05:00

A few posts ago, I was writing about the use of HTML comments in code, and wanted to show some HTML code here. In other words, I wanted to display actual HTML code - tags - in an HTML document (which of course this blog page is). This wasn't as simple as I thought!

To cut to the chase, the problem was that I needed to escape the special characters that are part of HTML code. From the bit of research I did, this topic appears to be pretty complicated; this Wikipedia article might be helpful. Here's another article on Special Character Entities in HTML.

To escape the special characters, you just replace them with a sequence of letters and numbers, in your HTML. The opening bracket character, or mathematical "less than" sign, should be replaced with this sequence: "<" (without the quotation marks). The closing bracket character, or mathematical "greater than" sign, should be replaced with this sequence: ">" (without the quotation marks). This allows the browser to remain unconfused when interpreting your code, and to display the characters on the screen the way you want.

Here's an example:

<p>Here's some HTML code displayed on an HTML page.</p>

Here's the same example, marked up with the HTML "code" tag, which provides the correct semantic meaning, and allows the browser to display the code formatted slightly differently to set it apart:

<p>Here's some HTML code displayed on an HTML page.</p>

A System for Backing Up Client Website Files

2007-12-02T14:51:00.000-05:00

Despite careful digital filing habits and regular complete backups, a couple of years ago I found myself in a situation in which I had lost some file that was important to one of my client web sites. I don't remember offhand what it was now - maybe a Fireworks graphic source file - and I don't remember how I goofed and lost it. But it did make enough of an impression on me that I began taking some extra precautions with client web site files.

What I decided to do was to set up a system that would serve as an additional backup to my regular backups of my whole hard drive contents. Since every client has remote hosting that I have access to, I realized that I could use that space for a backup of files involved in their web site. Of course, the remote site itself serves as a kind of backup of the actual site files, but I decided to routinely keep copies of other client files there too.

For me, everything has to be orderly - it's just so much less work and stress. So I decided to change the folder system I use for each client. Within the directory that holds their actual web site files, I place a special directory, and in that folder I place all of the supporting and source files. I now routinely upload that directory to the remote server as an extra backup.

One caveat: usually, I'm the only one with access to that remote site, but occasionally there's someone else in there as well, so I decided not to keep anything potentially sensitive in that folder, such as the Word documents I sometimes write up when I'm taking notes and working on an estimate for a web site. So I don't upload the sub-directory that contains my own internal written documents at all.

Another caveat: when the professional relationship is ended, for whatever reason, I make sure to go into that remote directory while I still have access and delete those backup files. If I have an agreement with the client to provide them with my source files, I'm glad to replace them on the server, or burn them to a CD or whatever is easiest, but I don't want to just leave them there without sorting them out and making decisions as to which the client should have. If nothing else, I want to clean up and toss out any non-useful files.

I use this system with every single client account now, and I don't worry so much about the possibility of losing important website-related files anymore.

Completed Web Site "Follow-up Informational Letter"

2007-11-29T11:33:00.000-05:00

The other day I wrote here about sending a client a "Completed Web Site" letter. I mentioned that I don't do this with every single client, for various reasons; at least, I don't always send a letter requiring them to "sign off". So I wanted to mention that when I don't send that type of letter, I usually still send a "Follow-up Informational Letter" shortly after the site is completed.

This letter might be by U.S. Mail or fax (because they simply gets more attention than emails) or by email, and serves mainly as a way to provide all of their domain name registration and hosting information in one place. If there are logins and passwords, I include those as well.

I admonish them politely to please save this letter somewhere where it can easily be found. Most of my clients control their own domain registrations, and I want them to be clear about that fact. Some also control their own hosting, so for the same reason, I want to be sure they don't get confused and think that I'm handling those payments. If I am handling the hosting, I want to remind them that they will be billed once a year, and that if they don't pay, the site goes down! (But I have a much more diplomatic way of saying that: "If for some reason you cannot pay this amount BY THE INVOICE DUE DATE but want your site to remain live on the web, please contact us so that the account doesn't lapse. We will have to allow to lapse any hosting account which is not paid on time.")

Of course I also thank them again for a great project and remind them how they can reach me for additions or updates to the site.

Making it clear to a client when a contract is completed

2007-11-22T15:20:00.000-05:00

A couple of years back, I became aware of the need to make it clear to a client exactly when my work on a contract was completed. Normally, my contracts are for the production of a complete web site, and after all the weeks or months of work, I consider that there finally comes a definite point in time when the site, and the contract, is finished. Because it's only fair to me, and because it's just good business, it's important to draw a line at that point: the contract has now been fulfilled.

Clients sometimes are in a big hurry to see their new site up on the Web, but like the idea of being able to do the final tweaking after that time, and I don't think that's a good idea at all! I can see no reason for it; they can see and consider their site just as well in its draft location. I don't rush them through the final processes of tweaking and re-tweaking, but I do expect them to finish this process before the site goes live. This contributes to my being able to make definite closure.

Of course, this doesn't prevent me from accommodating a few stray requests for edits after the site goes live, if the client does request them anyway - but it gives me a choice, and it allows me to be Ms. Nice Guy and do it voluntarily, rather than the client expecting me to do it because he only has a vague sense that the contract is finished.

In addition to telling the client that "ready to go live" is equal to "I'm done tweaking the site", another strategy I came up with is sending the client a "Completed Web Site" document. This is a Word document that I fax to the client for his signature, the day he says that he's ready to go live. By signing it, he's stating that the site is ready and that he understands that the contract is completed. The document also includes domain name and hosting information and logins where appropriate, and I suggest strongly that it be kept in a place where it can easily be found later.

I'll admit that I haven't used this document with every client. Sometimes I just feel in my gut that it isn't necessary and might be more of an irritation to the client than its worth. With other clients, however, I have the sense that it might be really important to be sure that he understands that he isn't going to be allowed to take advantage of an unclear situation by asking for many edits and changes after the site is officially completed.

Writing Business Emails

2007-11-17T10:50:00.000-05:00

If you are an independent/freelance or small-company web developer, most likely you use email as one of the main avenues of communication with your clients. Here are my suggestions for using email in such a way as to keep your clients happy and your business thriving.

Never write an email to a client when you are in a dead rush. I don't know where the idea came from that emails are for busy, busy people to fire off thoughtlessly, a bit like teenagers firing off text messages, but it's dead wrong when it comes to business email. The business world hasn't changed so much that it's okay for courtesy and clarity to go out the window. Take the time to think, compose your message and re-read it once before you send it, even if it's only a brief one.
Use an opening salutation, at the very least, the client's name. Don't fire off emails that contain only body text. It doesn't hurt you to include at least "Mr. Lopez," or "Hello Nancy - " (for example) at the top of your email, if nothing more formal than that. Some clients will be old-fashioned and expect this; some will be easily confused by emails, especially when forwards and CCs are involved, and this will help make your communication clear. Others have no manners themselves, and your courtesy might possibly rub off on them! It only takes a second, and can make a difference.
Always "sign" your emails, by which I mean, your name should be at the bottom of your message. Too many people leave this out, and again, I think that this is a terrible mixing-up of teenage-style Internet communication with business communication. If you don't use an automatic signature, make sure to at least take the 1/2 second to type your name. Personally, in business emails, I literally always use a closing salutation (I like simply "Best,") my name, and my company name or initials. This might seem a bit formal at times, but again, it only takes a second, especially if you use an automatic signature. For me, I feel that this clarifies that this is an official business email, and gives a sense of continuity and professionalism.
Maybe most important of all: never, ever, ever, ever send a business email when you are significantly uptight or upset about something going on between you and the recipient. If things have reached that point, it's time to use the telephone or a face-to-face meeting. Email is a dangerous medium in this respect: it's quickly written and sent, but it's in writing, permanent - and, it lacks almost all of the human touch which can be conveyed through phone or face-to-face. Many business relationships are harmed seriously by discussing matters which have become tense or emotionally charged by email; it simply is a terrible medium for such communication.
Be careful when forwarding! I have been amazed, embarrassed and annoyed several times in my business experience by people forwarding emails of mine - sometimes as parts of long chains of messages - to people I absolutely did not want to see my email. I suspect that some people think that forwarding long-chain emails is a clever way to keep many people "in the loop", but it's most definitely not clever, and is actually foolish and destructive, if it's not done very consciously and carefully.

Most of these pieces of advice fall into the category of not using email as a super-quick, don't-have-to-think method of communication. Although email is wonderfully fast and convenient compared with typing a letter or making a phone call, this is no reason to use it thoughtlessly, or worse still, childishly. Business is still business, and courtesy and civility are still important.