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- January 12, 2010
Virtual Terrain Maps II
January 12, 2010Read moreSUMMARY: I did a dump of everything that’s on my mind, and then started to sort it out to figure out what’s really the management challenge I’m facing. A sudden epiphany why the word “shrine” keeps coming to mind in this context. (more…)
- January 11, 2010
My “Most Important Productivity Message”?
January 11, 2010Read moreJack Kinsella, who blogs at Hermes Technology LTD, emailed me a question: What is your most important productivity message for 2010. I usually don’t think in terms of “The Most Important”, but it seemed like I should give it a go. You can see my answer to the question along with the responses from other productivity bloggers Gretchin Rubin, Mike Torres, Terry Prince, Scott Young, Kelly Sutton, Monica Ricci, and Eyal Sela. Many of these names are new to me, so I’m looking forward to checking them out when I catch a little time to myself. Thanks Jack!
- January 11, 2010
Interview on “Two Geeks and a Girl”
January 11, 2010Read moreI was recently on the Two Geeks and a Girl podcast hosted by Scott, Richard, and Julianne on the topic of User Interface in web development. It went up a few days ago, and you can hear me sputter and opine about some of my user interface philosophies. Check them out at Two Geeks and a Girl; they cover a broad range of web development and business topics.
On a side note, after recording this podcast and editing the podcasts I do with Sid, I’m really starting to get a good sense of my bad speech patterns :-) Slowing down, taking the time to formulate a sentence rather than restart it constantly, and perhaps opening my mouth wide might help! Perhaps I should do some solo podcasts just for practice. If someone would like to submit a question in the comments, any question at all, I’ll answer them in a microphone :-)
- January 9, 2010
The Big “No” to “Yes”
January 9, 2010Read moreVia the Smashing Magazine Twitter Feed, I came across this list of 10 Absolute “Nos!” for Freelancers. It is a good summary of the common wisdom that pervades the experienced freelancer’s mindset: client requests to which you must say no if you want to maintain any sense of sanity. What’s particularly interesting is that there are several “No!” points in this article that I’m deliberately trying to convert to “Yes”.
Being a freelance web designer who isn’t “known” in some way is a tough gig. You can either decide you want to reduce the amount of pain you’re going to get, or you can decide to somehow deal with it in exchange for something else. If you want to avoid pain, by all means you should take the List of 10 Nos right to heart. You’ll be happy you did. You’ll also have to harden your heart against the pleas of people who really aren’t evil and need a break.
The way I’m trying to crack the barrier is to create a service offering that is based on microtransactions for microproduct. In other words, you pay $25, you get something in return, and that’s it. You don’t get a lifetime subscription to free technical support. You pay per incident. And that’s what I am going to try to stand firm on. Right now it’s tougher because I’m also figuring out the system, but that’s the goal.
- January 7, 2010
Evaluating ModX Revolution
January 7, 2010Read moreI’ve spent perhaps 20 hours looking into ModX Revolution, a “simple” content management system (CMS) that had been a runner-up in a recent Best Open Source CMS Award back in November 2009. The winner was WordPress, which I’m already familiar with. I flipped a coin and decided I’d look into using ModX as the base for implementing “easy to update” support for the $75.00 templates. How bad could it be? I was experienced making templates for both WordPress and ExpressionEngine (sort of), so picking up a new CMS should be relatively easy, right?
Well, not really. It’s super easy to deploy a new CMS, but mastering it is a function of how well the documentation and code examples clarify the architectural and workflow decisions of the CMS designers. ModX is above-average in the availability of documentation and an active user forum, but finding a clear, concise explanation of how it all fits together (beyond toy-like examples) is taking a long time. Plus it turned out I had downloaded the old version (called Evolution) of ModX, not the swanky new beta (called Revolution), so today I had to re-install and start from scratch. It is not documented that well yet, but I’m starting to get a handle on how the designers think about the CMS and I’m writing some notes here to help me retain those insights.
Why use a CMS and not something else?
The reason I want to use a Content Management System (CMS) is because I don’t expect the average client to want to edit HTML, and I don’t want to be the bottleneck when it comes to the client’s need to update something on their page. In the past, I’ve used Dreamweaver to set up templates and required the client to use either Dreamweaver or Contribute (the “client version” of Dreamweaver) to make updates to the plain HTML files that comprise their site. However, this is an expensive solution (minimum outlay: about a hundred bucks) and Dreamweaver/Contribute doesn’t deliver a great user experience. Web-based forms, on the other hand, have come a long way in the past five years, with Rich Text Editing capabilities rivaling those of simple word processors. WordPress is a good example of a nice CMS experience, though it is geared more toward blogging, and perhaps provides TOO much power.
A simple CMS would be easier for clients, and require no outlay of cash on their part. I just need to figure out how ModX work, because it’s kind of wacky compared to what I’ve used before.
