Sunday October 19 2008
jQuery Kungfu
Not really kung fu - but considering that I’m just getting into jQuery I’m pretty happy. I’ve set up a FAQ on my clients site where each answer will be displayed after clicking and click again to hide. I also set up a show/hide all switch which is working nicely. *pats self on back*
However there is one area that I’m stuck on. If some answers are open and some are closed, clicking show/hide all closes open answers and opens closed answers rather than moving all answers into a single state. ideas?
Sean. inscribed these words of wisdom on Sunday Oct 19, 2008 at 06:34 PM
Clients | Javascript | (0)
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| tags:
jquery |
Thursday October 16 2008
Sick & Behind & outsourcing
I’ve been sick for the past 10 days or so and it looks like it’s finally starting to clear up. However this illness has led to me falling behind in all areas of my life. I’m currently in the middle of giving and grading mid-term exams at the university where I work on my day job. I’ve also barely been able to do any work on my current clients site. Fortunately, this client is also a close friend and he’s very understanding. Additionally he has a somewhat soft deadline.
Another thing I’m behind on is the reading I need to do. I’ve been asked to write a review on a book about Moodle 1.9 from packt publishing. Anyhow the plan is to finish the reading tomorrow and get started writing the review to be placed on my teaching blog as well as amazon & slashdot.
In the meantime, I’ve secured some other work styling an ExpressionEngine forum for another firm. I’m excited to be doing some outsourcing for another firm and hopefully it will lead to further work. Once I’ve finished the work, I’ll see about publishing their name here. First I want to be sure that I’ve done a good job and second I also want to be sure that the firm is okay with letting it be known that they have outsourced part of their contract.
This is my first time doing this so I’m not sure if I bid too low, just right or too high. Actually it wasn’t so much of a bid as I was asked via twitter if I would be available. I think I may have bid a little on the low side. I guess the only way to find out is to see how long it takes to get the project complete. It’s about to start any time now, I’m just waiting to get the source files.
Saturday October 04 2008
Site Handed Off to Client
Yesterday I completed the publishing guide for my first client. it’s 10 pages long with screenshots and took much longer than I expected it would to write. The client now has access to their site to change and update content. It feels good to have successfully completed my first site and recieve the final payment.
The actual “design” of the site is a commercial theme that the client wanted. I took it and converted it to Expression Engine.
The site is a language school for children in Korea - ILE 외국어 학원. The client wanted a site to provide information for current and potential customers (parents) as well as showcase childrens progress. Student work is showcased via embedded video and mp3s.
A forum has been installed but not styled yet. That’s the second stage of development after the live launch of the site. Right now the forums are set up and can be used by students, parents, & staff. I’ll be working on fitting the forums to the rest of the site look shortly. This is not something I’m looking forward to as I remember styling forums for my teaching blog ages ago and it was a major pain in the butt.
I’m also very pleased to have recieved an email from my client suggesting that he would like to add further enhancements and features to his site in early 2009. Repeat work is always a good thing.
What’s Next
I’ve got to prepare mid-term exams for my students, but I’ve also got another client, also going to use ExpressionEngine. that I will be starting on while at the same time working on the forums for ILE.
Read the rest of this postSean. inscribed these words of wisdom on Saturday Oct 4, 2008 at 07:36 AM
Clients |
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clients,
development,
expressionengine |
Tuesday September 30 2008
hand off to client
Tomorrow I’ll be preparing to hand off my first client site. Everything is basically ready. I had the client take a look at the site and send a list of corrections which I will take of tomorrow morning as well as change one icon I am not happy with. - I found it on a free icon pack somewhere, but later found it it was an iphone icon. Even though the iphone will not be coming to Korea (clients target audience is 100% Korean) I didn’t want to use it.
In order to ensure that I covered every aspect of preparing the site for the client I posted a question on the EE forums and recieved some good information. The best info I got was the screencast from train-ee.com on just this issue.
I forked over my $10 and watched it. It’s mostly common sense, but did point out a few things I hadn’t considered before. This is not suprising since I’m new to the web development game. More importantly it also confirmed that I was on the right track for a lot of other things. If you’re new to web development and/or EE in general then I would definitely recommend this as a resource worth watching.
Sean. inscribed these words of wisdom on Tuesday Sep 30, 2008 at 07:53 PM
Clients | Expression Engine |
| tags:
ee thread,
clients,
expressionengine |
Thursday September 04 2008
Hand off to client
I have almost finished stage 1 of my clients site and we’ll be ready to go live soon. I’ve been working slowly, but steadily on this one. Fortunately my client is in no rush and I am able to really think carefully before doing anything.
Anyhow I’m now starting to think about how to hand off the site to the client for when it goes live. Should I prepare some sort of guide with screenshots on how to update the site. If so should it be online, in MSword/pdf or both? What should be included. One area that concerns me is text styling. When writing something if the client wants to have subheadings how I can ensure that they use h3 or h4 tags rather than just bolding them or typing in ALL CAPS (shudder).
I’m also somewhat concerned about image uploads - how do I ensure that they are resized correctly in order to not break the page layout. I’m sure there are other things to consider, but since this is my first client site, I’m not sure how to proceed.
There is a distinct possibility that I will be taking the train down to where the client lives and provide hands on explanation, but that won’t always be the case. Thoughts opinions?
Tuesday August 19 2008
New Client
Yesterday I recieved the signed contract and deposit for my latest client. This is going to be a big site and I’m looking forward to doing it.
The interesting thing here is that the client chose a template to download. I unfortunately misread emails and purchased the wrong template and had to purchase the correct one. Anyhow I’m not impressed with template-help.com as both times I downloaded the archived files I had to re-download it multiple times due to crc errors in the zip files. I ended spending about an 1 for each template trying to get an uncorrupted version.
The mistake file that I downloaded was table based and I’m very happy I don’t need to build from that design. The second template is pure CSS, but it’s not exactly semantically written and there are some errors in the code primarily many semi-colons are missing. I know this as I went through the css files and indented them to increase readability - the original downloads looked like this:
#content h2{font-size:1.71em; font-weight:normal; color:#000000; font-family:Times New Roman; background:url(images/icon1.gif) no-repeat top left; padding:5px 0px 5px 40px; margin-bottom:9px;}
Mine now look like this:
#content h2{
font-size:1.71em;
font-weight:normal;
color:#000000;
font-family:Times New Roman;
background:url(images/icon1.gif) no-repeat top left;
padding:5px 0px 5px 40px;
margin-bottom:9px;
}
anyhow I’m ready to dive into this as soon as I finish the navbar I’m working on - it’s causing me headaches in one remaining section.
Thursday August 14 2008
Smokin’ Busy
Since the weekend I got smokin’ busy. From friday to Sunday I wrote a massive post comparing online slideshow services for my teaching blog. I also got in touch with my original client, but he hasn’t yet delivered the promised images. Also I am about to start a site design for a friend opening a business (yes he’s paying me) and was contacted by a language school in a nearby city about doing a site for them - still emailing back and forth.
finally I also picked up a small design project of replicating a menu built in tables and making it tableless as well as adding superfish javascript functionality to it. This was going well until I looked in IE and realized it was completely messed up. I don’t know why it took me so long to find the solution, but I had to delete one of the classes in superfish.css to get everything to render fine. Now I just need to tweak up the navbar a bit and send it to the client.
Later today, I’m meeting a local web designer (also a non-Korean) for a coffee to talk about design and life in Korea. Hopefully this turns into a good connection or friend.
Busy busy busy.
Saturday August 09 2008
Client Returns
My first client has returned after a 3 week lack of communication and before that sporadic. I’ve sent an email to my graphic designer and he’s still willing to work on the project so that’s good.
I also emailed the client and let him know that I’m about to start a new project and I’ve also picked up extra work in my day job so his will end up being lower priority. He was understanding about that so we’ll see how things progress from here.
In the future I’m going to include a project restart fee in the contract for situations like this. I actually considered doing it this time anyhow, but I need the work for my portfolio. Fortunately at this point I’m not desperate for money and can afford this type of situation even if I don’t like it.
Another notch on the learning experience stick.
Sunday July 20 2008
bye bye client
I have followed up several times and get slow or no responses or evasive answers. At this point I have given up on this client. I will continue the work if he ever gets back to me, but it will no longer be a high priority.
I will now devote my full energy to redesigning my family blog and learning jQuery as well as improving my photoshop skills. Of course I’ll be working on securing more clients, but right now I’m at an impasse regarding how to do that.
Tuesday July 15 2008
No comp - no code
I haven’t got a comp back from my graphic designer after having sent the latest feedback a few days ago. Without the comp, the client isn’t going to approve the design. Without approval I can’t slice the image and start coding. The client is also partly to blame, as I haven’t yet received a key image to include in the banner image. What’s a coder to do?
Read some of the books that I have and practice my skills in other ways. I’ll be finishing off the book I bought on typography today and probably re-starting the javascript book because I didn’t understand it the first time around (only made it about 35%). I’ve also started planning out a redesign of my family site. I’ve got the wireframe ready, but am stuck on what I want to do with graphics parts, besides we need to get a new family photo done so I can include that in the design as well.
Sunday June 29 2008
Rejection & Web ReDesign 2.0
Yesterday I sent a preliminary comp to my client and the parts that I liked best were rejected. The general layout is good, but the parts where I spent some time on photoshop tutorials - rejected. I guess it’s good that I sent the comp in early before I got married to the design. I’ve responded back asking for more specifics about what the client would like to replace the rejected elements with.
On Friday I received my copy of
Web ReDesign 2.0 and started reading through it. This book is definitely going to be a very valuable resource for me as figure out my workflow and business practices. I’m very grateful to Leslie of EllisLab for recommending this book.
Friday June 27 2008
Wire Frame complete
Yesterday I sketched out my design for the client using paper and pencil. At that time I also set up the dimenions of the various blocks in pixels. Then in the evening I opened up photoshop and recreated the sketch with exact measurement so that I know what it looks like on the screen. So far I’m satisfied with everthing though I may extend the header another 24 or 48 pixels.
Using sites that the client likes I’ve decided on a number of elements that I would like to use - the design borrows ideas from several sites, but will combine them in an unique manner with some of my own additions. In the end there should be some similarities to his current site to create continuity across designs yet large change to create a feeling of newness and uniqueness. The design will also strongly fit into the blogs industry, education - this being an easy one for me since I teach and also did my own teaching blog theme.
I intend to have a comp ready by the end of the weekend to submit to the client for suggestions and revisions. Since he is off to a conference and then family vacation, I may have some time before receiving feedback. If that’s the case I’ll start a rough layout in HTML/CSS and then if I have more time, I’ll start work on my own portfolio site since I’d really like to get it up soon.
Hopefully my workflow makes sense, but if it doesn’t or readers have suggestions I’m open.
Wednesday June 25 2008
Deposit Sent
My first client has sent the deposit to my paypal account via an e-check - looks like it might take a few days to clear. Regardless of that I’m going to operate on faith and get cracking on the site. Unfortunately for me, my wife will be out of town for the next three days and that means evenings spent watching the kids and not getting any work done.
First up is sketching out a potential design on paper based on input from the client - I’ll then scan that and email for feedback. While waiting for the feedback I’ll start setting up the basic layout in xhtml and CSS - columns, rows and floats etc. Width’s, height and exact position will be modified later once I have the graphics ready.
I also need to start getting familiar with wordpress since this client uses wordpress. I’ve never used wordpress before, but I’ve already set up my sandbox where I’ll be developing the theme. First get it working with lorem ipsum text, then add theme to wordpress site and start importing code. If anyone is reading this blog and has advice on a better procedure, I’d be very happy to hear it. This being my first client, I don’t have my workflow finalized and would like to be as streamlined and efficient as possible.
