Best Practices

For anyone who isn’t glued to the TV every Monday night, House is a TV show about an extremely obnoxious doctor who makes life difficult for everyone around him. He’s manipulative and vindictive. He has no faith in the concept of basic human goodness, and he goes out of his way to embarass and ridicule everyone who crosses his path. Did I mention he’s a drug addict? He gets away with all of this, though, because he is brilliant and able to arrive at medical diagnoses that no one else is capable of acheiving.

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I sat down yesterday and wrote out all of the stuff currently going on in my life that requires my attention. I am a juggler with a lot of balls in the air. Most of these items involve developing my freelance web design business. There’s a couple of personal items in there, but for the most part it’s about growing The Web Shop. (Actually one big to-do is the rebranding of The Web Shop that is going on right now.)

My point is that at least the next few weeks are going to be extrememly busy for me. I’d rather not just leave my Best Practices blog fallow for that long, though. So consider this an open casting call for guest bloggers. Maybe you’re asking yourself, “Why would I want to write a post for someone else’s blog?” Here’s one blogger’s take.

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Any post I wrote this week would just be about how bad it sucks to have pneumonia. Hopefully the antibiotics will have me back in composing shape next week.

I made a decision this week to add Google ads to the blog. There are a couple reasons for doing this. The most obvious was to monetize my efforts in writing with a step that is very easy to implement and maintain. I wanted something that wasn’t going to take a lot of time now or in the future.

The second reason is to have some first hand experience using the Google AdWords interface. It’s been several years since I’ve actively used it. Google traditionally creates fairly intuitive UI’s with clean design. Looking at things that are simple and effective is great inspiration for my own design.

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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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The Future of the Web has released edition #3 of Carnival of the Web. Whatever Jesse’s criteria are for including a post, I made the cut again with Leaving an Audit Trail In Your Database. There’s quite a bit this month about JavaScript, both technical tips and some big picture philosophy on how it should be used. Some of my favorite items were in other areas, though:

• Let’s Talk About Frameworks, Security Edition – The B-List talks about the trade off between security and functionality in a web application. Intelligently written.
• Viral Marketing – Looking for an explanation and examples of viral marketing that isn’t slanted either hyping or attacking the practice? Here’s a simple and direct look at what is happening when a viral marketing campaign takes off.
• More - the entire Carnival of the Web

Up until this morning, the feed for this blog was in “summary” mode. I hadn’t put much thought into how the feed was being sent out. Once I did, I couldn’t think of a good reason not to offer the full feed for anyone who wanted to view the posts in their entirety via their feed reader of choice. So here it is.

So for the second week in a row, I’m late getting my Wednesday post up. To make things worse, this post doesn’t even cover a topic on running a web design business… at least not anyone’s web design business but mine.

After what seems like a lifetime of splitting my time between my freelance work (which I really enjoy) and a corporate 9 to 5 job (which pays the bills), I’m finally able to focus on what I really want to do. I’ve officially given notice, and my last day of “work” will be August 18th. This transition is taking a lot of my focus right now, but in the long term it will allow me to pay more attention to all aspects of my business, including this blog.

I still plan on posting about as frequently, but my plan of making certain to have a new post every Wednesday will likely be suspended for a few weeks as I tie up loose ends at my job and make the transition to a full-time work-at-home entrepreneur.