For the record, I just wanted to add that I have rejected jobs, even when I needed the money badly, on the grounds that the money being offered was way off compared to what was required of me to do. When a friend said to me, "You are crazy. This could solve your problem. Just take it and charge higher next time", I replied, "sure it would take care of my problem but it's about the principle. Besides, if he tells someone else about me and says to him, 'this guy is good. He charges cheap for his work', I start a vicious circle of cheap clients/projects".

Another story:
Long time ago when I first decided to start doing side projects, someone approached me to do a website for him. When I gave him my price, he immediately, he ranted, "you know I could give have given to this to an Ibo (his words, not mine so don't blame me guys ) guy who would do the job at a much cheaper price but I say make I give you as you be my guy". The minute he said that, I diplomatically replied, "sorry sir but this arrangement will not work". I could have shouted back, "then go to the Ibo guy" but that's probably what he wanted me to do - entrap myself. The call ended but believe it or not, a month or so later, he called me back to do another site for him and agreed to the rate I quoted him. Go figure!

There are many times I have been tempted to sell my soul to the devil, so to speak, but I stood my ground on principle. Hopefully the end result is that client says to himself, "wow, this guy isn't like the others. I admire him for that".

This is a good topic!

A person of honor is so defined by their ability to say no even if it affects them in the long-run. Not all jobs are worthy of being outsourced. Why? Cos your company name and integrity are on the line. What if the company you outsource to messes up? The client won't care about them but about you. Next thing you know, word goes around and business likely decreases. Also, depending on your cash flows, atimes, it might not be a bad idea to reject jobs on the grounds that you are very busy even if you're not. Why? This gives the client the impression that you are a very busy shop. Besides, you could even use the opportunity to tell the client that if they want it done they will have to pay extra for it as a rush job. For those wondering, "how could he say that?", save it as it happens in other aspects of business. Why should web dev be any different (I hear some of you saying, "abi?" to which I say, "good for you )?

One dictum I have always lived by is under-promise but over-deliver. Whereby, as you have stated, you perceive the client is over-demanding or wanting you to deliver everything including the kitchen sink, if you know it can't be done, just say no. It's better than you staying up late for days on end, just because you said yes or to "show dis guy who I be". Why? cos time is money and I bet that part wasn't calculated into the estimates.

Finally, if you smell a rat, of course you probably won't break it down to the client like that but you could diplomatically reject the job on the grounds of say, the expectations are unrealistic. That way both parties leave in a win-win situation.

Bottomline, as you said, no be by force to do job for client. Before settling for this option though, make sure your cash flow situation is sound otherwise na so you go go broke

As always, my 2 cents.

I know this is probably still in prototype phase but as I tell pple, if you are a tennis player and each time you serve in practice, u go off target and rather than improve you keep saying, "this is practice, y bother? I will get it during the actual game", sooner or later you will lose focus and in the end be worse off for it. I say all that to say the following:

1) You shouldn't have inline CSS except for that one-off situation. In general, be it PHP, javascript or whatever, if you use one thing more than once, it is definitely a candidate for encapsulation

2) Some of your tags are uppercase and some are lowercase. For XHTML purposes, make them all lowercase.

3) Rather than use proprietary attributes in your body tag (leftmargin for instance), use CSS (body { margin: 0; padding: 0; } )

4) I would get rid of one of the images on the home page. When I first got to the site, I was debating which made more sense and which to click on as to me, they are saying the same thing. I would probably get rid of the one with the girls as they don't convey any business meaning.

5) You have logos for home, site map and contact us at the top and have links for home and contact us in the blue bar. I actually prefer them in the blue bar as those logos are too small for me (and perhaps others) to notice not to mention, they might mean different things to different people (for instance, the site map logo looks more like an org chart)

6) I am beginning to see a lot of "proudly Nigerian" on sites to the point that I am wondering if someone should come up with an official logo. This is where the webmaster association as discussed earlier would come in handy. Right now, each developer puts up his own version. Inconsistency isn't good.

7) I like the logo. Having said that, in addition to increasing text font, increase the font of the 2nd line of the logo as I (and perhaps others) can't read it.

Overall, I will say good job. Sorry for being picky but I am only judging your site based on how my professional work has been judged over the course of 8 years. Some things just get ingrained in you to the point where it comes out and you don't even know you said what you said

I hope the above help.

Better yet, why don't those jumping to say A2J should employ google show A2J an example of a search term guaranteed to pull up good results?

I don dey tire with this, "just google for the information" jargon. Just because one person is smart enough to use it doesn't mean that others can too. Besides, what would happen if , for example, you went to a doctor's office and told him/her what is wrong with you and the doctor turned around and said, "Just do this" or "just do that"? How would you feel without guidance?

Show him an example, peradventure he doesn't know how to do that for himself. Now, if after that example is shown he still has issues, we can run him out of town. Until then, I think we owe it to A2J (as well as others in the future) to come up with good search terms.

As always, my 2 cents.

LOL Beline,

Seriously though, if udotot the masquerade mm'isinne awo idip, then why should I?

The name is just an attention-grabber, so get your mind out of the gutter

Altogether now, letz sing the song, "udotot tot nanga ase tot (repeat 10 times)" LMAO!!

Typically, I would only share this with www.webmastersofafrica.com members but I am feeling happy today . If you are not aware of these shortcuts, hopefully, you will find them helpful. Enjoy!

Browser Shortcuts (IE and FF):
Enter a URL in the address bar then -
to add ".com": Ctrl + Enter
to add ".net": Shift + Enter
to add ".org": Ctrl + Shift + Enter


OS Shortcuts:
Minimize all windows (Windows): Start (Windows) button + D
Pull up Windows Explorer (Windows): Start (Windows) button + E

To all:
so that others (including myself) may benefit, please feel free to add others. Thanks,

At a minimum, you should bookmark these sites:

http://www.w3schools.com/css/default.asp , http://meyerweb.com/eric/css/ , http://molly.com/articles.php , and http://www.csszengarden.com/

I hope these help.

Installation is different from configuration.

You won't get an argument from me there. That being said, you have to admit that to some people, it is the same difference in terms of it probably being an overwhelming experience. It's just like friends and family asking me every time to fix their computer just because I am in IT. I have to keep reminding them that I am into software, not hardware. But again, to them, it's the same difference.

I kindda wonder why some will want to be an average

It's human nature. Just like there will always be lazy pple, there will always be average people. As long as our fingers are not the same length, life will never be the same for everyone. Besides, if there weren't average people, the world would be one boring place

ITBeings,

That's good to know and I thank you for sharing. But, how many non-IT people would be willing to go above and beyond (hence my statement above)? I don't have the stats, but I would be willing to bet that a majority of the bloggers will most likely probably just want to blog and probably are a little intimidated with respect to what FTP and/or plugins.

Personally, when I hear or read words like, "on a click", I panic because for the most part, from my experience anyways, nothing is as simple as it seems. There's always a catch somewhere, that one thing that if you ignore, might just well come back and bite you in the you know what

I just installed Joomla 1.5 on my system. The book pretty much says it can be installed, "on a click", yet it took me an hour at least to get it working right because I overlooked a couple of things. If I, with my experience (and I know, as stupid as I can be sometimes ) could encounter such, how much more Funmi the average blogger?

kashikapor,
I assume you did this site and/or know who did? If not, I guess this won't help much. Otherwise, please read on:

One issue right off the bat is a lack of complete, across the board testing - I use FireFox (FF) exclusively and unless you know for sure that an overwhelming majority (as in 95% or more) of your target audience will be using Internet Explorer (IE), I suggest you look into why the middle column (with the search et al) isn't showing up in FF but is in IE. In case you are wondering, FF use is picking up. Besides, if you coded with web standards in mind, you wouldn't have to worry about which browser displays the site the best as it would (theoretically) look good regardless of media viewed in (including mobile devices).

Another issue, though minute, would be to perhaps at least tease the audience with a couple of songs before requiring a log in. Right now, all attempts to click on a resolution link are met with "please login". Considering there are many sites where I can view videos for free and without logging in, YouTube being a major one (just in case you come back with, "well we offer videos that YouTube doesn't have, I recommend you look at www.viewnaija.com ), I don't see why I need to login to begin with. Result? I probably won't be more than a first-time visitor to the site. But hey, that's just me. I am very lazy when it comes to my web surfing and I (and probably a few others) expect certain things at a bare minimum when I am browsing.

Other than the above, site looks good to me.

I hope the above help.

he he, I provided screenshots for a similar question here, if that is what postmaster is hving problems with

https://www.nairaland.com/nigeria/topic-111794.0.html

I hope this helps.

yeah,

I would say that it depends. If you are not technical and just want to share your views with the world, then a free hosted version will do. However, if you are a developer/someone who wants to go beyond typing characters, then the self-hosted is the way to go. At the end of the day, at least to me, nothing beats control. That is why I would rather code in notepad than in dreamweaver (but I digress ).

As always, my 2 cents.

Yeah, I joined 691 days ago . No wonder I never saw this post all this while. My bad. Wow! This forum has been around at least that long? Impressive!!!

Oh, by the way, another mea culpa - I exaggerated with respect to the %age. It's actually 12/21 ~ 60%

Cost?

LMAO! I find it funny that 95% or so of the posts so far have NOTHING to do with the topic at hand but A LOT to do with playing table tennis (and on a kpako table using kpako bats for that matter ), so to speak.

To borrow from one of Shina Peters' songs of old, "Na wa ooooooo, na wa for some Nigerian web developers. (Ha ba!)^4"

Weeell, not to go off topic

Education in Finland isn't and can't be free - when next you get your pay check, take a look at how much is taken out of your paycheck. Even if you aren't paying for it, someone else is. If you are in the latter department, then though your education may be free (which I doubt especially is you have stuff like sales tax, property tax, etc some of the monies of which goes towards education, but I digress), it is at the cost of someone else's taxes.

Caliboy,

Do you know Mfon Ekwere? He is in Finland as well. We grew up together and chat very often. If you don't would like to add him to your list of buddies, send me a YIM at udotot25 (k'usak now ).

Coming from the US, I see adverts for everyone including the president and his butlers claiming to be the "best in the world" (even though they probably cater to nothing more than the first 10 square miles of their business property ), so personally, I don't take offense to your ad.

I feel if anyone has any gripes with it, they should prove the ad wrong by beating it. This to me is what makes capitalism great - competition.

As always, my 2 cents.

For a Nigerian website - large inventory. I can't tell you how many bookshops I visited during my visit that didn't have books on Akwa Ibom culture, yet ask them for the latest white man's "motivational" books and they would produce 20 from the same author.

Also, how about online payment and delivery? Again, based on above, I would hate to waste the fuel driving around only to return home disappointed.

ujuslims:
it's called convenience. Look at it this way: If you want to fly from Lagos to say, Abuja, you could either take time out of your day to buy the ticket directly from the airline or pay a travel agent to do it for you. In the end, that is their business and you have a choice of whether or not to use their services. Capitalism at its best.

afroxyz:
There is one more thing you need to do. There is a difference b/w being listed in google and being listed in google but with a low ranking. What is the essence of you being listed on google if you are on page 20? For the latter, you need to make sure your website's structure adheres to web standards and is semantically marked up. This is called Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

Another way to get listed is via google adwords. Here, you pay google to list you on their site and for certain keywords of your choosing, whenever a user clicks your link, you get charged. You get to bid for keywords and the more you pay, the higher you are ranked. This is called Search Engine Marketing (SEM).

In conclusion, listing with search engines is just the beginning. Read up on SEO and SEM for more details. I hope this helps.

how come, we get fewer site reviews these days?

I will speak for myself on this:
I posted my first 6 or so sites for review here. Majority of the reviews were of the, "the site is so simple" variety. Now if it's once or twice, it would be okay but when it's a trend, why bother posting them when I know what the answer will be? Besides, I have a link to my website in my sig file and one can always go to my portfolio page from there. I am not going to resort to bulky and annoying animations for instance just to, "show dem wetin i fit do" or to butter my ego amongst my peers. Besides, having surfed from various cybercafes during a recent visit, I have concluded that there are things that will never feature on my sites that are aimed at a Nigerian audience.

If I were to venture speaking for others, especially those who are new to the game:
Most of the reviews are very abrasive to the point where the weak-minded, rather than take it, shy away altogether. Rather than say, "you might want to do something about that logo", you read a lot of, "that logo is crap!". Now, whose advice would you most likely heed?

Don't get me wrong, criticism is healthy and necessary. However, there is a way that it can be delivered such that it results in the education, as opposed to the miseducation, of the reviewee.

Again, I have spoken for the most part on my own behalf. Let others speak for themselves.

That's the point Gamine

it's a variation of Faze's, "Kolomental"

As I dey enter this board o,
I start to kolo,
Say Cactus and Gamine dey show,
But as a big boy, I no come dey yarn dem o o
,

On the contrary sir

K, I was just wondering

If it fulfills you go for it.

Nah. I am a LovePeddler (not the sexual type. get ur mind out of the gutter ) when it comes to my time. If I am offered pay, maybe. I once maintained a forum. It was sheer pain to say the least.

so e-monkey,

does that mean those who have volunteered for WIKI, Joomla!, and other open source jobs, many of which I am sure you have benefited from, are crazy?

folks,

people learn things differently. One man's meat is another's poison. This is up there with, "it is easy and simple. All you have to do is A, B and C". Some learn via googling, others via books, and yet others need that human presence. I belong to the last 2 myself. I am a slow learner but once I get it, I get it.

Sure, I can google for the info but I can't stand reading on a screen. Did I hear someone ask, "well my2cents, u can always print it out". Sure, but I don't like that either. I like books and for people teaching me to stand over my head. Then I fire the 20 or so questions I have to make sure I really understand it.

Of course I can't speak for A2J, but if it were me, telling me to google for stuff would be a turn off. If he wants a mentor, then that's what he wants. I am sure if he wanted e-resources, he would have said so. This is a forum. There is no shame in totally exposing yourself.

Why won't I volunteer? I am glad you asked - I am not in Nigeria and from what I have said above, I would rather be a physically-present mentor. So come on folks, he wants a mentor. Let someone step up

As in all things business folks, it's about monetization. Add a little twist for the Nigerian factor with respect to "mafia"-tization and product delivery to the mix too.

If I don't see how to make money off of anything, why would I be motivated to do that thing? This is where hard numbers come in - how many people presently surf the net in Nigeria? How many of those people hv had a desire to actually buy something online? What's the demographic of such surfers? What would such people like to buy? etc. That is why I will always say I like America: they have statistics for everything, including how much vapor you excrete from your nostrils on a sunny day in march at 2pm (probably not, but you get where I am going with this, I hope)

In a country like Nigeria where we like to chop in a highly profitable area alone, if there is someone who could enter the market much cheaper, will the likes of interswitch et al want such a competitor? Besides, I have had this conspiracy theory in mind for a long time: Interswitch is backed by paypal in disuguise

Okay now, assuming we have 1001 online payment solutions right this very minute, how will the garri I order from a company in Kogi State get to me in Uyo, Akwa Ibom State? What of if I suddenly realize that I don't want the goods and/or want to return it? Have we thought about that? This issue isn't mutually exclusive. Both online payment and delivery go hand-in-hand.

In conclusion, let's not be troubled by the likes of interswitch. Remember, at a time only First Bank was processing Western Union transactions. Now, not only are there other banks, you also have moneygram and probably a host of others. Eventually, online payment will be everywhere. It's just a matter of time. However, for it to happen, we will need leaders and not followers.

As always, my 2 cents.

150K might be a start but I would certainly, if not already, obtain clarification on, "improve system performance" and "system training".

You never know, it could be bigger than you think

what beats me is that, at least as far as I can tell, it is only the webmasters section of NL that is being hit with these porn site posts.

Makes you wonder how Seun and/or the spammers view webmasters and this section of NL

p.s. If other sections of NL are getting spammed as well, I stand corrected.

From what I can tell, you used frontpage to develop the site. Is there some kind of setting or option you selected, maybe by mistake? Sorry, but I am not familiar with FP to help you bro.

In the long-run, if web dev is what you intend to do for a living, endaveour to learn to code by hand (as in notepad) and then graduate to better WYSIWYGs like dreamweaver or my personal favorite, homesite.

This might help clear up some air:

Though a temporary fix, you can avoid the classpath thing altogether by, in DOS, going to where you have your Java installed (probably in the C drive and in java/bin) and doing the following:

1) Type java -version: if something comes up, you are in the right place
2) Either type next "javac (path to java file)" or move the file to the bin folder and run javac *.java for example
3) Then run java (class name, without the .class extension)

NOTE: This is a temporary fix and should only be used if you are doing your regular "hello world" type app. For more serious apps, you gotta set ur classpath man.

Think I am joking? Check it out for yourself

LMAO! The second photo is the killer LMAO!!

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/worldnews.html?in_article_id=513820&in_page_id=1811