I have been doing freelance web design for a little while now. I think about maybe...8 years or more. It has made me some pretty good money that has given some padding in the checking account. However, I am beginning to wonder if I want to continue doing this.
The main problem, customers don't know what they want. And all that matters to them is their Google ranking. Don't care about how the page is laid out and how it is W3C compliant. However, as soon as the page goes live, if they search for something about their business and they are not number 1, then they call me and ask me why. Not much I can do about it really. I'm not a SEO professional.
Maybe I'm not a "people person", I don't know. But what I do know is that I am starting to wonder what to do...
Showing posts with label Web Design. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Web Design. Show all posts
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
Rethinking...
There was a time that I really wanted to be a programmer. Web programming (especially PHP) really appealed to me. I loved it. I found that PHP could do just about everything.
I got a job doing a little bit of web programming and then the company moved. I didn't want to move since I planned on asking the girl that I was dating to marry me, so I looked for another job. After working there for a little while, mostly doing network admin stuff, I took up the additional position of web programming. Then came the day that my boss asked to make a special web application. It turned out to be a bit more than I could do. Not my skill set really, although I am still learning to program, just that there was too much to do day in and day out.
I started to get a bit frustrated and was in a bad mood all the time. Not the position that I wanted to be in considering that I went down that road once before and fought hard to get out of it. So now I am at that position again.
My boss is starting to get annoyed at me that the project has been "in the works" for about a month now. Granted it's not a small project but I haven't been able to work on it a couple of weeks.
Not sure what to do. Tell him that I just can't finish it? Tell him that I don't want to finish it? Just ride it out a little longer and see if I can get it done? Eigh...I'll just play it by ear and hopefully it will finally be over with.
I got a job doing a little bit of web programming and then the company moved. I didn't want to move since I planned on asking the girl that I was dating to marry me, so I looked for another job. After working there for a little while, mostly doing network admin stuff, I took up the additional position of web programming. Then came the day that my boss asked to make a special web application. It turned out to be a bit more than I could do. Not my skill set really, although I am still learning to program, just that there was too much to do day in and day out.
I started to get a bit frustrated and was in a bad mood all the time. Not the position that I wanted to be in considering that I went down that road once before and fought hard to get out of it. So now I am at that position again.
My boss is starting to get annoyed at me that the project has been "in the works" for about a month now. Granted it's not a small project but I haven't been able to work on it a couple of weeks.
Not sure what to do. Tell him that I just can't finish it? Tell him that I don't want to finish it? Just ride it out a little longer and see if I can get it done? Eigh...I'll just play it by ear and hopefully it will finally be over with.
Tuesday, March 13, 2007
Designer vs. Coder...who will win?
The company that I work for started a website for one of the services that we offer about 2 years ago. It was given to me to design and implement. Since then, the site needed an overhaul.
I am by no means a designer. However, I can code in html and css like a machine. The design work was handed out to a third party designer and I was given the task of coding it to a functional web page.
I am a stickler for web standards. I hate flash. I hate IE. All the things that a designer really doesn't care about. So when it came time for me to take the mock ups and turn them into web pages, I was in for a treat.
The designer sent me the images, I sliced them up in Photoshop, and started coding. Then it came to my attention that the front page was going to contain a flash movie. All I asked the designer was, is to please give me a still image that I could put in for a fall back for those that don't have Flash installed. What was I sent? An email with statistics on how many computers had Flash.
OK...not what I asked for but I had some ground to work on. My response? I simply told the designer that it was not fair and not in the best interest of the company to discriminate against those that don't like Flash. I do not have Flash on my computer...I don't even run Windows.
Why don't I like Flash? It's useless. All the moving around of this and that while I'm trying to read the content on the page is distracting at the least. Flash is a tool for the designers that can't code. I know I know...there *can* be scripting involved with Flash but WHO CARES! What's PHP, JavaScript, dHTML, Perl and all those languages for? Scripting! Not some GUI based whatchamagig that you can put a picture here and make this move here and do something over this way. Just too distracting. I go to a website for the content. Now if it's a nice looking site, then that's all the better. But content is king.
The battle ended a few minutes ago when I asked one more time for the still images. They are now in my inbox waiting on my to finish this post so I can make the 7% of the population happy again. I win :)
I am by no means a designer. However, I can code in html and css like a machine. The design work was handed out to a third party designer and I was given the task of coding it to a functional web page.
I am a stickler for web standards. I hate flash. I hate IE. All the things that a designer really doesn't care about. So when it came time for me to take the mock ups and turn them into web pages, I was in for a treat.
The designer sent me the images, I sliced them up in Photoshop, and started coding. Then it came to my attention that the front page was going to contain a flash movie. All I asked the designer was, is to please give me a still image that I could put in for a fall back for those that don't have Flash installed. What was I sent? An email with statistics on how many computers had Flash.
OK...not what I asked for but I had some ground to work on. My response? I simply told the designer that it was not fair and not in the best interest of the company to discriminate against those that don't like Flash. I do not have Flash on my computer...I don't even run Windows.
Why don't I like Flash? It's useless. All the moving around of this and that while I'm trying to read the content on the page is distracting at the least. Flash is a tool for the designers that can't code. I know I know...there *can* be scripting involved with Flash but WHO CARES! What's PHP, JavaScript, dHTML, Perl and all those languages for? Scripting! Not some GUI based whatchamagig that you can put a picture here and make this move here and do something over this way. Just too distracting. I go to a website for the content. Now if it's a nice looking site, then that's all the better. But content is king.
The battle ended a few minutes ago when I asked one more time for the still images. They are now in my inbox waiting on my to finish this post so I can make the 7% of the population happy again. I win :)
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