Best Practices

Since I’ve hit the one-year anniversary of being a full-time freelancer, it seems like a fitting time to look back on this blog. Enjoy some of my favorite best practices posts:

Pricing Your Web Design Service
I wrote in this post that I prefer to give clients a fixed price per project, and that’s still true today. I did talk to a lawyer recently who preferred that I charge an hourly rate. That’s the world a lawyer lives in, so that isn’t too surprising. I’ve also worked a few times with a client who prefers me to give 3 different prices for best case, worst case, and expected case. I do that in my quotes, but so far the actual invoice has always been for the expected case.

Leaving an Audit Trail In Your Database
This is the post that receives the most search engine traffic. It’s a very easy to understand and implement primer on protecting the data in systems with frequent changes.

Breaking the News To Your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Customers
In the year since I wrote this post, I’ve realized that being able to talk knowledgably with clients about SEO is even more important than I previously thought. If you do any optimization work, it is critical to make sure everyone involved knows what to expect.

Tracking Client Change Requests
There are a lot of very complex project management systems designed to document and track every change request from a client. Some are very good, but they can be overkill for simple sites that only involve input from a few key players. Here’s an easy and free way to keep track of changes.

Talking to Clients: Phone vs. Email
The meat of this post is that either a phone call or an email will be a better means of communicating with clients depending on the situation. I guess for a more comprehensive analysis, I would need to include chat applications like Campfire and instant messenging in the mix.

Custom List Bullets with Background-Position
Sometimes the simplest posts are the most satisfying.

10 Steps To Clean and Optimize Your Web Site’s Code
Code optimization is a topic that I haven’t seen covered very often, and I provide some useful tips here. As the cost of technology comes keeping file sizes small becomes less of a motivator for programmers to optimize, but keeping code clean and easy to maintain remains a priority.

5 Keys To Tell If You Would Be Happier As a Corporate Web Designer Or a Freelancer
This was written during a phase when I was trying to write really catchy titles for my posts, but the content is actually a good read for anyone teetering on the fence between striking out into the freelance world and punching a time clock for the man.

Defending Against SQL Injection Attacks
I still maintain most books and tutorials that provide beginning instruction on allowing your web site to interact with a database don’t give enough attention to preventing these types of hack attempts. I suppose they don’t want to scare off newbies, but this is mission critical info that everyone needs to know from day one.

Going the Extra Mile With Email Address Configuration
This is also a good way to find new customers. Offering to spend a few minutes to configure email addresses for free, will make you a hero in the eyes of most small business owners. You’re the first person they’ll think of when the time comes to update their web site.