New Year, New Updates
Permalink | Tweet This! | | January 6, 2009 by John in Freelancing, Friar's Ride, JB.com, Portfolio, Web Design
I’ve updated my Resume and moved my Portfolio over from SSDD Web Design. I’ll slowly be pruning the content over there until I deactivate it completely.
While I was sick I started moving all my e-mail archives from my two gmail accounts, FriarJohn and SSDDWebDesign to a central account: JohnBedard.com (at) gmail.com. The two older accounts will stick around indefinitely and are forwarded to the new one, so I don’t care if people update their address books or not. I’m using Mozilla Thunderbird with IMAP enabled on all the gmail accounts to drag and drop email between accounts and download older “keepers” to my hard drive for permanent archiving. These are mostly emails regarding my old clients and my old cars like the Porsches and Jeep.
My freelance work isn’t completely dead. The “Leather” project is on lifesupport, but I’ve just been hired back by WLN to upgrade their site to the latest WordPress and do a bit of tidying up.
Friarsride.com is still hanging out empty and waiting it’s time in the spotlight. I’m also still thumbnailing like crazy on the new design for this site, so that The Dog’s Bollocks theme can move over to Friar’s Ride.
Run away! Run away!
Permalink | Tweet This! | | December 4, 2008 by John in Freelancing, Professional, Web Design
Jeffrey Zeldman Presents : 20 signs you don’t want that web design project. These sound particularly familiar (#7 is particularly painful to read):
- Client asks who designed your website.
- Client can’t articulate a single desired user goal. He also can’t articulate a business strategy, an online strategy, a reason for the site’s existence, or a goal or metric for improving the website. In spite of all that, client has designed his own heavily detailed wireframes.
- Your favorite client, for whom you have done fine work in the past, gets a new boss.
- Client begins first meeting by making a big show of telling you that you are the expert. You are in charge, he says: he will defer to you in all things, because you understand the web and he does not. (Trust your uncle Jeffrey: this man will micromanage every hair on the project’s head.)
People Ask Me Stuff…
Permalink | Tweet This! | | November 17, 2008 by John in Freelancing, Web Design
…and here’s one of the answers: Google Releases Official Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide
Google has released an official Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide (PDF). It doesn’t release any of Google’s algorithm secrets, but it does cover Google’s best practices for title tags, meta tags, URL structure, navigation, content, anchor text, headers, images and of course, Robots.txt, making this a good way to review the basics and make sure you have that stuff down correctly.
Now go forth and SEO!
Fast, Good or Cheap - Pick Two
Permalink | Tweet This! | | by John in Freelancing
This concept works for just about everything, not just web design and development. Fast, Good, Cheap: Pricing Freelance Work
If you allow your clients to have fast, good, cheap work done by yourself then most likely you are working your butt off for very little return which is why you must allow them to choose a combination of two only - either good & fast OR good & cheap OR fast & cheap.
I really don’t want to do fast cheap work - I’m not interested in creating an inferior product. I don’t really want to do good fast work, despite the increase revenue potential. In fact, I tend to do good cheap work that where I can take as much time as I need to get it done. But everyone has their own priorities.
SSDD Web Design, Why?
Permalink | Tweet This! | | November 4, 2008 by John in Freelancing, Of a Personal Nature, Web Design
As I further formulate and contemplate changes to my “online empire” I’ve been wondering why I bothered to set up SSDD Web Design as a separate endeavor. There are plenty of freelance web designers out there who just do work as themselves without creating a “storefront.” Some of the reasons I’ve come up with are superficial, some are deeper, and some just plain silly.
(more…)
Exit Strategy
Permalink | Tweet This! | | October 29, 2008 by John in Freelancing, Graphic Design, Web Design
This post, “5 Questions to Ask Yourself Before Starting Another Freelance Endeavor,” on WebWorkerDaily is worth reading just for the last item, which I’m horrible/forgetful at addressing:
What’s your exit strategy? If your new venture doesn’t fare as well as you hoped, how will you get out of it? Will you be able to sell it? Or will you simply change your strategy? Also, how do you quantify if it’s a success or not?
Although I’m glad that I was never in the position to opt for an exit strategy, it’s always an important part of my initial planning. It allows me to have a Plan B if the venture doesn’t turn out to be as profitable or as worthwhile as I thought it would be.
I need to plan (with the prospective client) for my exit after project completion, especially for the positive/successful variety. I usually assume I will hand over a CD and be done with it, but I need to make sure the client understands that. The negative exit is usually/should be described in the contract.
SiteMasher
Permalink | Tweet This! | | October 20, 2008 by John in Freelancing, Web Design
This came across my feed reader from WebWorkerDaily:
I wasn’t sure what to make of Sitemasher when I first heard of it. With Sitemasher, you can build a web site, manage the content, get analytics, implement basic SEO, and you get managed hosting to boot.
Sitemasher is really meant to be a tool for Web developers to help them provide integrated Web services to clients and either hand over the finished site to the client or continue to easily manage the site for the client.
The price is a little steep but the article goes on to analyze the price vs. features and it seems a bargain.
This could be ideal for some of my future freelance clients (I can’t see migrating any existing clients). And by ideal for them I mean ideal for me. I’m finding that I want to be involved with ongoing maintenance less and less. For the relatively small billable time involved in maintenance it’s not worth the distraction.
Be Kind to the Color Blind
Permalink | Tweet This! | | by John in Freelancing, Web Design
Particletree has a great article on the issues involved in designing with the color blind in mind.
…I have a color vision deficiency. Like roughly 7-10% of all males, my deuteranomaly makes it difficult to differentiate between some colors, like red and green. Color deficiency, or color blindness as it’s commonly referred to, doesn’t mean that I or people with similar conditions cannot see certain colors. They’re not invisible and I don’t see in black and white (a condition that is actually very, very rare).
[Editor's note: I'm planning on rolling my web design related posts back into this blog from SSDDWebDesign.com soon (and spinning all my motorcycle related content off into a new blog using this design) but until then I'll start posting new web design related content here-JB]
This Just In…
Permalink | Tweet This! | | May 30, 2008 by John in Freelancing, JB.com
JohnBedard.com has been blocked by the State of Montana firewall as sexually explicit.
Yes! I have arrived!
Alas, SSDD is still acceptable. ::sigh::
Prescott 2008 Trip Report
Permalink | Tweet This! | | May 21, 2008 by John in Freelancing, My 2002 Triumph Bonneville America, Prescott 2008, Travel
(Updated 05/27/08)
I’ve posted my pictures from the trip on Picasa. I tried to start posting updates on this blog on the first day from Springville, UT, using my Nokia internet tablet, but all my work tapping away on that tiny on-screen keyboard was lost and I was too pissed to try again. Not sure why WordPress didn’t automatically save the draft as it normally does in Firefox. Maybe it’s a javascript thing that is unsupported by the browser on the Nokia. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaanyway…
What follows is a rough, day-by-day recounting of the highs and lows of my trip. It’s probably going to get long. I feel like rambling on. My updated/final maps can be seen on my TBA Wiki.