Best Practices

Your watch isn’t broken. Wednesday came and went without the regular Best Practices post. Normally I’ll think about ideas during the week, but not start writing the post until Tuesday or Wednesday. In most cases, there’s no problem with that system. Which brings me to the topic of this post: unplanned diminished capacity.

Any freelancer has probably already considered what would happen if they had a truly debilitating illness or injury. (You may not have a good plan to deal with it, but you’ve at least considered what it would do to your business.) You can buy both short-term and long-term insurance to help in situations where you can’t work at all, but what about situations where you can work, just at a reduced capacity.

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I had a problem come up with two of my clients today. They took code that I had designed on a server running PHP 4.2.2 and moved it to a server running PHP 5.0+. Here’s an example of the type of code I had written.

<? echo $_REQUEST[emailaddress] ?>

This code displays the value the user had entered for emailaddress on a form. On both of the servers running PHP 5.0+, this code was presenting an error message that it had failed to recognize a constant named emailaddress.

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The classic line we expect to hear from high-maintenance actors is, “What’s my motivation?” It’s a valid question. How is the actor supposed to provide consistent inflection and body language without an understanding of what their character is thinking? The actor can always just read the lines, but the result probably won’t be the “perfect moment” the actor is trying to capture.

As a freelance web designer, I have a lot of freedom in when I choose to perform the various aspects of my work. Most afternoons I can take a nap, run errands, or just sit in front of the TV. If I’m not motivated to work in a particular moment, there’s rarely a reason that I need to do so right that second. If I wait for a later time when I’m feeling more inspired, the work might flow out of me without much effort at all. Often that’s exactly how it happens.

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Unless you’re reading this on your RSS feed, you might be scratching your head and wondering where you are. This is still the blog where I discuss the best practices I’ve discovered (and am still discovering) as an independent web designer and programmer. It looks a little different because I’m using a new WordPress theme. I intend to release this theme for public use, but I wanted to give it at least a few weeks in a live environment to shake any bugs out.

You may be wondering about the giant Buddha in the corner. Originally I began this design intending to use it as an entry for the CSS Zen Garden, an arena in which the Buddha would seem very appropriate (even if a bit overdone). Somewhere along the way, I decided that I wanted to create something that could be seen by a wider demographic than just the professional designers that frequent the garden. I decided on a WordPress theme.

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Obviously an important part of running a successful business is to provide a service that people want. If no one is willing to pay for your work, then you have a hobby, not a business. But revenue aside, there’s a lot to be said for a hobby. If you’re like most freelancers, then web design began as just a hobby for you.

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