Archive for 2008

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Self promotion Part 1: Entering and/or winning awards

Freelancers don’t have the marketing budgets of large corporations but they still have the need to promote and market themselves. In this short series I’ll be talking to local web professionals and hearing about their self-promotion techniques. Part 1 focuses on entering/winning awards.

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Little yellow boxes

2008 is my first Christmas as a freelancer, so I thought I’d take the time to say thank you to some of my best clients with some little yellow boxes of joy.

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No more (web) heroes anymore…

The web has been buzzing this week over the ill-fated, make-your-employees-redundant-then-blog-about-it-somewhat-insensitively, debacle over at Carsonified HQ.

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Some recent business mistakes and the lessons learnt

This week, saw me make some business mistakes and pay the price for it. I hereby choose to share my shortcomings here in the hope that others may learn from my feeble business brain.

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PHPNW Conference 2008 Review

Last weekend, I opted not to spend time with my friends, nor did I choose to perform DIY on my (never finished) home; instead I decided to geek-out at the first ever PHPNW conference at Manchester Central.

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Creating a web app’s folder/file structure

I’m convinced that folder/file structure plays an instrumental role in ensuring a downloadable app doesn’t confuse people and is easy to install.

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How I debug CSS in IE6

I make my living as a Front-end Web Developer, which means I spend quite a bit of time making websites look as good in Internet Explorer 6 (IE6) as they do in other browsers. It isn’t rocket science and I’ve honed my technique to make bug fixing as quick and easy as possible.

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Freelancing != more work

I’ve got to agree with Elliott Jay Stocks here, freelancing shouldn’t automatically mean lots of work. When I hear of other freelancers working silly hours, I always think, why?

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10 worst things about freelancing

Don’t get me wrong freelancing is great but there are some things that really ache about it.

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Would like to meetup

Last night saw the first ever Northern Digital meetup, at Socio Rehab in Manchester. As a rule, I don’t usually go in for networking events but there were a few people I knew attending so I opted to go along.

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How much does it cost to be a freelance web developer?

A computer, broadband and knowledge. Those three items alone are all you need to set up as a freelance web developer. You already have all three so, essentially, it costs nothing to start up your own web business: or does it?

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Standing out from the crowd

The freelance web development marketplace can be crowded, so you have to stand out from your fellow freelancers. So last month, I decided to experiment with some new marketing strategies, in the hope of grabbing some new clients

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Hello Google Chrome, welcome to the internet

This week saw the launch of the internet’s newest web browser, Google Chrome and what kind of frontend developer would I be if I didn’t give it a quick review?

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Should you test your web developers before employing them?

These past few weeks, I’ve been doing some work for a new client. Prior to getting the gig, I did the all the usual things: sent my prospective email, went to meet the client, etc. However, this client, a big web agency, did something I’ve not experienced before – they gave me a programming test.

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Take 2 web apps into the shower?

Since announcing the launch of Cart45 last week, I’ve had quite a few people asking how I’ve managed to create an ecommerce app and another web app (Bean Counter) simultaneously. So here goes…

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