I’ve never had set goals before so this post will be a first. I normally start a new year hoping for the best, expecting the worse and landing somewhere in-between.

Take last year for example. 2009 was a bloody weird year for me. I spent a majority of it stressed, tired and complaining (and for those of you on the receiving end of this I apologies and thank you for your patience).

Highlighting the worst bits of the year I would have to say (in no particular order):

• Not selling my second house
• The cellar on my second house flooding
• The guttering on my second house blocking up, overflowing and causing damp
• My mum being seriously ill – twice!
• My wife writing off her car in an accident that she, my mother-in-law and my son, miraculously walked away from unscathed (well Jack was carried but that’s only because he can’t walk yet…)

Career wise it was a year of ups and downs. I left Leeds College of Art to take up the role of Head of Web Development at a company called Independent Content Services and my first project was a site for ITV, which was quite exciting. ICS had also brought me on-board to help them establish a new web services agency that we named Infinite Path and I blogged about a while back. Unfortunately for me, the new business has experienced more success through online marketing than it has through my particular areas of expertise and so I wish then well for the future but feel it’s time for me to stretch my legs.

But not everything was doom and gloom:

• I officially registered Havoc Inspired as my business
• I relaunched this website
• I wrote my first tutorial for .net magazine
• Boagworld won podcast of the year at the .net Awards
• And most importantly I’ve watched my baby grow into a gorgeous little boy

Baby Jack, 1 year old

Going freelance!

So just before Christmas I handed in my notice at ICS and on January 15th I will officially be self employed. For just over two weeks…

Joining Headscape

From February 1st I will be taking on the role of Product Evangelist at Headscape. I’ll be focusing on the relaunch, development and promotion of GetSignOff.

I’m really excited by this opportunity and the chance to work with the very talented guys at Headscape, and Paul of course (am I still allowed to gibe Mr Boag now that he’ll be my boss? Bah, he’s not my boss yet!).

I'll be joining Headscape in 2010

Oh, and I’ll be working from my home office so it doesn’t get much better than this!

Please start from the beginning…

As I said in a previous post I’ve really enjoyed interviewing industry professionals about their career paths and from your comments and feedback you’ve enjoyed watching them.

I’m going to continue producing the series, however I’m going to start releasing them every two weeks instead of every week. This is mainly due to time, it very time consuming arranging, recording, editing and transcribing a new interview every week and I also have other personal projects that I would like more time to work on. So the series will start back on Monday 11 January with an interview with Andrei Zmievski, formally from Digg and the Lead Developer for PHP6 and the next episode will arrive on the 25 January.

Please start from the beginning... iTunes cover art

I’ve also change hosting for the series. I was previously hosting all the videos on Vimeo, but after Pauls experience with them I thought it best to move as well. Interestingly I appear to have found somewhere even better, blip.tv, which don’t limit how much I can upload and allow me to provide you guys with better quality video download through iTunes so if you’re already subscribed to Please start from the beginning… your feed should be updating shortly. I’m also looking into the possibility of releasing an MP3 version of the series for those of you that have requested it, in the mean time take a look at my post on listening to audio-only for videos on your iPhone and iPod Touch.

Goals for 2010

So here are some goals for 2010.

• Sell my second house. It’s been on the market since 2008, damn recession!
• Buy a new chair for my study. Currently I’m using one of our dining table chairs. Any recommendations?
• Get a new car. Seen as I’m going to be working from home from now on we’re going to stick with one family car this year
• Buy a TimeCapsule or Drobo. I’ve wanted to install a decent backup system for a while, this year will be the year!
• Blog more. (Yaili has inspired me to attempt to blog at least every week with Project52 as a motivator)
• Loose 2 stone. I managed to shed 1 stone last year, I aim to loose another 2!

I think that’s about it. Hopefully I’ll achieve all these things. I’d be interested to hear what plans you guys have for this year? Hope it’s already off to a good start!

Around 3pm on Sunday 4th October, Havoc Inspired and all my client sites along with about 700 other sites hosted on the same server, were hacked!

24 hours later I received an e-mail from my hosting provider:

At approximately 14:48 on Sunday all accounts on the server we host your reseller account on were targeted by a hacking group. They exploited a script from a customers account and were able to upload malicious scripts which were then used to exploit a PHP function to deface all hosting accounts on this server.

As soon as the hack was discovered we began restoring all accounts using our R1Soft CDP Backup system, this process however is taking much longer than normal and we will be raising this with R1Soft which we understand this doesn’t help you now. The full restore process should be complete within the next couple of hours, at this moment most sites on the server are back to normal.

Several of my client sites are still yet to be restored…

The attackers basically replaced every index file on the server with their own malicious script that shrank the browser window and made it float around the screen, eventually resulting in the browser crashing.

As you can imagine, I find this unacceptable. Therefore I have decided to move to a dedicated virtual server with Media Temple. I have had mixed responses to this decision, some people worn against, others swear by them…

The server runs Plesk which I am pretty familiar with already and was available for me to start configuring within 15 minutes of me pleasing the order, very impressive!

Their knowledge base also seems to be quite extensive and I’ve easily found example commands that I just needed refreshing on.

So so far so good. I kind of feel like a grown up now, having my own server and there’s something about being able to SSH that just feels hardcore to me.

Anyone else with Media Temple? Experiences good or bad?

As I begin to receive more inquires for freelance work I’m having to spend more time thinking about when I can start each new project and the question has arisen as to when should you take a deposit from a client to secure your time?

Imagine this theoretical scenario:

Client A’s project is scheduled for the first two weeks of October.
Client B’s project is scheduled for the last 3 weeks of October leading into November.
Client C’s project is a big one lasting all of November.

We’re currently in September and Client D has just approached you to spend 2 weeks working on their new project, but you can’t start until the beginning of December…

Do you invoice Client D for a deposit straight away to secure your time, even though you can’t start work on their project for 2 months?

Theoretically I would say yes for a number of reasons:

• If a client backs out you still at least have their deposit.
• You can plan your finances better knowing that work is scheduled in.
• You know what you are going to be earning over a period of time because quotes have been accepted and deposits paid.
• You clearly know when you need to start accepting more work.
• It shows the client that you are busy and have other clients so you must be good right?
• It shows they are committed to the project.

There is a concern however that asking the client to pay a deposit up-front when they won’t see a return for a long period of time could put them off?

Would a better solution be to schedule the project, but not take a deposit straight away and instead invoicing them 4 weeks before their project is due to start?

This way if they do back out you have a good timeframe to fill that slot with something else.

I’d love to hear any and all opinions on the matter.

If you’re just starting out as a freelancer (working alone) or a new design agency (non-established or very small team) it can be very tempting to go after those big clients and huge projects as soon as possible, a pitch opportunity may arise or maybe you’re even approached for the job. The appeal is obvious:

• Highly recognised clients look great in your portfolio
• A great looking portfolio makes winning new clients much easier
• The big clients pay the big money
• You want to make your mark on the industry

However it’s important to ask, are you challenging yourself by undertaking this project or are you simply being unrealistic with the proverbial dollar signs flying in front of your eyes?

There’s good reason why these huge projects are typically won by established design agencies.

• They have the man power to achieve it
• In house staff are cheaper than hiring freelancers
• They’ve built up a solid foundations and procedures to take on large scale projects

Consider for example that you do win the pitch and the project is beyond your means. All the positive points I mentioned earlier become negatives:

• Even if you complete the site to a degree that it can be launched, the likelihood is that it’s not going to look great and the fact that your client is a “big” client simply means that your mistake is seen by more people
• Nobody is going to want to work with you because you obviously cannot deliver
• All the money that the client has paid you has most likely been spent on paying freelancers or another agency to bail you out and complete the work you couldn’t do in the first place
• You’ve definitely made your mark on the industry but for all the wrong reasons

It’s important not to run before you can walk. It’s great to challenge yourself, in fact it’s important that you do to avoid complacency and stagnation, but this shouldn’t be done at the clients’ expense. In fact one of my personal “golden rules” is:

Never take on a project that you’re not 90% sure you can achieve.

10% uncertainty is enough of a challenge in my book, and 10% of a project that you may possibly have to hire another freelancer to complete isn’t going to cut into your profits too greatly.

Kooji Creative

They are inviting various creative types, across a broad range of specialism’s to join what they are calling a “Collective”.

A pool of multi-disciplined freelancers whom can call upon each other to collaborate on various projects when/if the need arises.

I think it’s a nice idea so I’ve added myself to the “Collective”.

You can find out more about what they are doing at www.koojicreative.com.

Shhh… we’ll turn a blind eye to their non-accessible, Flash website… just this once mind. ;-)

thehodge.co.uk Redesign

So I drew two cartoons of Dom, one for the top of the page (Guitar Hero’s Dom) and one for the bottom (Slumped Dom). The grundy style to the blog evolved naturally after that.

Guitar Hero’s Dom & Slumped Dom

Linkage: thehodge.co.uk

Let me know what you think of the final result?

My study

First off, I should tell you that I’m not a full time freelancer at the moment. I take on freelance work alongside my full time job as a Web Developer in Leeds.

When working freelance I focus primarily on design and front-end development, however as most freelancers in this industry have to be, I’m quite flexible.

When an enquiry comes in I gather as much information as possible. I ask the client to forward me any leaflets, brochures, photos, business cards, current website, anything that can give me a feel for what there company/business is about.

I also try and find out as much information as possible about their expectations. What do they specifically want the site to convey? Who are their competitors? What’s there target audience? Are there any specific features they require for example a contact form. I then typically get back to them with a quote once I have an idea of how long it’s going to take etc. Depending on the client I will ask what their budget is, however this can be dodgy ground I’ve found, as clients can often think that your simply trying to get the most out of them and not that your trying to find out if they’re being realistic.

Once everything is agreed upon I ask for content before I even put pencil to paper or mouse pointer to Photoshop. This is one of my personal rules and I’m quite strict about it. The reason being you can’t design a good site without knowing what content is going into it. For example I had client that initial told me they wanted a 5 page website, fair enough, so I asked them to send me the content and what I got back was so minimal the site ended up being 1 page!

There’s also a second phase to this content gathering… once I have all the content, I build a non-styled mock up of all the pages of the site, with basic navigation at the top. I’ve found this very useful for a few reasons.

First and most importantly the client doesn’t get lost in the design of the site and focuses purely on the content they’ve provided.

Secondly, because they are focusing purely in the content, they typically think of additional pages they want to add, or entire sections they don’t really want. It’s great to chop and change all this content at the beginning rather than at the end. It’s a real time saver.

And finally, because basic navigation is in place and they can get a feel of how they will move around the site.

Another one of my rules is I never talk about what ideas I have about the design until I actually have a draft I’m happy with. I will ask the client what ideas they have, make notes about colour schemes etc, but I won’t say “right I’ve got this idea” because I’ve never completed a site design that was anything close to my initial idea and it can be misleading if the client is expecting something that they don’t end up getting.

As for coming up with a design, I’ll start off on paper, then move on the Photoshop. I’m a Photoshop purist I’m afraid. I’ve never even used Fireworks, but I’m quite fast in Photoshop so I don’t see any reason to change.

I’m also still using Dreamweaver, code editor only of course. I’ve tried a few others and they seem fine, but the little green icon attracts my eye too much on a morning and it’s what I always seem to end up using.

I’ve also very recently come across cushycms thanks to my good mate Anna. It’s fantastic as a very basic CMS for clients who can’t afford to fork out for a more heavy duty one to be integrated, or if simply the site doesn’t call for it.

I’m also PC based (duel display), though I’m saving up for a Macbook. PC’s are what I’ve known for years, so my mail client of choice is good old Outlook through which I manage my contacts, calendar and obviously mail, all synced to my iPhone.