₦airaland Forum

^^^ lol. I was merely responding to your question now, he he.

Seriously, the client is to give you their requirements. Never give quote without ironing out their requirements plus perhaps additions from you. Having said that, going by the standard hotel websites that are out there, I would say charge nothing less than 500K.

Awwww, thanks a ton

First of all, I would like to thank the academy and the fans

Seriously, I didn't expect this, especially considering that this year has probably been my "worst" in terms of contributions. As many of you may know, when the year started with the new layout, I was one of the most vocal opponents to it. Maybe it's my old eyes but I get dizzy when I look at the list of posts. As a result, I do a quick scan and pick no more than 3 posts to respond to.

Thanks for the vote. I will do my best to get even better with the frequency and quality of my posts in the future.

How do you define "mini"? Is it:
1) Mobile website?
2) Website with say, 1 or 2 pages?
3) Website targeted towards a particular device with a small screen?

^^^ Yes it is. There is a "kill" switch. I assume you haven't read a recent UN report (I can see you googling to prove me wrong as you read this. Go ahead joor ) that is proposing more control over the internet...or the report from Syria where they are trying to lock down everything coming in/going out of Syria because of their rebel situation.

Just pray that it is never used.

^^^ to follow up:
1) You already gave them one form. You would basically be copying and pasting for the other form. What's the difference?

2) As the guy above me has said, and I have done this a lot, you could have said, "For this amount, I will create a page that says, 'contact us (with the link going to the contact page) for more details on how to request a quote". This approach, though not good, is at least better than what you have there. What do you think will happen (directly or indirectly) to you if he asked someone like me for a professional opinion? I will tell him exactly what I am telling you and there is a very good chance he will lose respect for you and not recommend you to others.

Always do it well to the end. It's not about how much you make today alone but how much you stand to make in the future...it's about building future relationships.

Since this is a forum, google for and check out at least 50 other fora, making notes of what you like and don't like. From there you can come up with stuff that will make your own site unique.

good luck!

You can't avoid it but you can try and mitigate. Always have "progressive enhancement" and "graceful degradation" in mind:
Say you have a contact form. To avoid wasting the user's time waiting for a server response, you have javascript-enabled form validation. Then for those with javascript turned off, you also validate the same data on the back end. This also helps with those spammers who purposely turn off javascript before sending you their spam (yes, it isn't 100% proof but that is a discussion for another day. This is for those who fill out forms for the right reasons).

Make sense?

Dis na trick question. The least you can charge is zero...at least until someone comes up with negative money

1) The content area of the site is too light. Darken the background a little bit so as to make the content area stand out more
2) Contact form: I entered "dd" in all fields and got an error for "name" and "comments". What kind of rule did I violate there? It would be nice to explain to the user
3) Ensure that all forms are consistent: Why use one (better-looking) form on "request quote" and another for "contact"?
4) Still on forms: Why use a 3rd party form on, I assume, a corporate website? Doesn't look professional plus now, that company has access to all emails sent to them

^^^ Sooo, a feed, where the owners actually say, "here, take news from my site and digest it or share it as you please" is different from scraping where you are doing it without the site owner's permission.

Make sense? Like 7Up, is the difference clear?

^^^ So going back to my post, though I guess I didn't make it clear (sorry about that):
Either they have copyright laws but lack the resources to pursue violations, or they don't have them or they do and these scrapers are not in violation (which I doubt).

Again, the business person in me says the scraping, even with backlinking is wrong - I am losing out on potential eyeballs and potential revenue (why visit punch online when I can go to nigeriaworld.com?) to these scrapers, while at the same time I am giving up much of my bandwidth. Now, if there is an arrangement (again, which I doubt) b/w both parties, that is a different issue and I assume it would be stated clearly on the site.

Don't get me wrong, I like going to one site and viewing news from many sources in one place. It saves a lot of time. I visit nigeriaworld daily. Having said that, every now and then I wonder about the scraping. E no too good sha.

HTML 5's SECTION TAG is synonymous with HTML 4's DIV tag. The only difference is that SECTION is more semantic.

Beware though - not all browsers support this, granted you can use these news tags in a progressive enhancement/graceful degradation kind of way.

^^^ It doesn't have to be mobile responsive. For one, do you know if it was part of the initial requirements? Besides, writing the extra code to me is work and deserves extra pay. You can't just add bells and whistle, perhaps in an attempt to stroke your coding ego, and yet get paid peanuts for it.

I would say they are scraping. I think it is obvious. Scraping isn't good for the "scrapee" because server resources are being consumed unnecessarily. Also, the scrapee is losing out on potential ad revenue that would have accrued to them if that site had sent the traffic over to them instead.

I once worked for a company where we had an entire department devoted to detecting scrapers (even MSFT was scraping from us!). Once found, they would block their IP. One person went as far as suggesting that once detecting, we should send a worm out on their site as punishment but cooler heads prevailed.

In the case of Nigerian sites that are being scraped, it could be they either don't have copyright laws covering them or do but lack the resources to pursue. Listing their names on the site isn't enough. I have a news site, I merely provided links to those sites and still list their names as sources. Those people have spent time and money hiring people etc to gather news. I can't just use it without rewarding them. As a matter of fact, google ads won't even show up on a news aggregator website once you are found out as it violates their Ts&Cs.

% or em should be fine. Instead of say, 9px, you do the math for its equivalent (probably .9em, if you want to use em) and use that.

You probably want to use responsive design, for consistency. There are many articles on google for this so check those out. Basically, you can dynamically determine the screen resolution of the device the user is visiting with and serve up a css stylesheet with measurements for that particular device.

Good luck!

^^^ Oh believe me, I share a lot on here. however, just like there are joint stock companies and partnerships, I choose to be the latter. I am not obligated to share what I consider personal information here. Why? There is the issue of big brother and there is the issue of competition, to mention but a few. Besides, the last time I came close to doing such, a google search pulled up a case where this particular nairalander copied a recent design I came up with (basically 100% xeroxed). I had to get a lawyer involved. Till this day, I am still shocked.

I hope you understand.

It depends on the browser. Having said that, it is typically under the "tools -> options" tab for each browser. In the case of firefox, you would find it under "tools -> options -> content"

Good luck!

You will need to YIM me for these
yawatide

I have 3 packages, with charges going up based on each package:

1) Basic website (standard 5-page or so website. Usually comes with a contact form. No serious programming here)
2) Interactive website (such sites include a database component like logging in, members-only section, etc)
3) Content Management System (such sites will use a Content Management System but involves a lot of work, with respect to customization

Problem solved. For some odd reason, I was trying to access the site as "https". Why? Till today, I have no idea, he he

Never heard of SMO (and don't have time to google it as I am sure it won't affect what I do in any way shape or form ) but for the others:

SEO:
Search Engine Optimization - Everything you do on your site to ensure that it outranks your competition on the search engine pages. This includes the "Natural/Organic" where via keywords, coding practices, content, etc, and the paid where you actually pay google (and others) for your keywords, bidding for them with other competitors, to ensure a certain position on their search listings page.

Paid listings (Pay-Per-Click, or PPC) appear at the top (yellowish background) and the 8 listings in the right column of the search listings page. The paid listings are typically ecommerce-type sites. You bid for a keyword and the highest bidder gets to see their site at the top. Your ads are typically displayed evenly across the day. You set a budget and if that budget is exceeded (as in say, your particular keyword is $5 and your daily budget is $10 = 2 clicks for that keyword), your ad disappears. This is how the likes of google make their billions, by the way - awoof money.

The "natural/organic" show up in the (larger) left column and can take weeks/months to get your site moving up to the top. Also, since there are others out there, if you don't keep, say, updating your site, your ranking will drop. The keyword for this type is "relevance" - the more relevant your site is, the higher it ranks. Relevant site rankings are more often than not influenced by what your site is. Typically, this refers to research-type sites (like wiki), which explains why such sites come up first, as opposed to ecommerce site. Also, a site that is very specific (say, about white balls) will be considered more relevant than a site that talks about a myriad of things (white, yellow and black balls).

SEM:
Stands for Search Engine Markteting and refers to the "complete package" of SEO and PPC that you do to ensure the success of your site.

Make sense? I have tried to cut out as much "fat" as possible and give it in layman's terms.

By the way, others should feel free to jump in here

Taking a bird's eye view of the 3, I like the photography site the most...Not to say the others are bad. I just happen to like the blending of the colors on the photography site, compared to the other 2.

Kudos!

I am curious as well. Not to say it is a bad decision, but it may not necessarily be wise. For one, Drupal has a high learning curve for developers if you've never used it before.

Give us more details, like, will the owners need to update it regularly and are not going to pay you for the maintenance? In the end, drupal may not be the answer. Again, it all depends on what you reply next.

Good luck!

yeah, maybe as i complain too much, dem note my IP, then ban me well well

^^^ he he, nice url

Is it just me or is the punch website down (for the past 3 days)?

^^^ I think a better way to ask would be something like, "A website designer with a minimum of 5 (or whatever) years of experience is needed". Something like that would sound much better, again, IMHO

"A Good (above average)"..?

Sounds very insulting IMHO. I mean, for starters, how do you define "above average"?

OP has said it all and I will add a few more to that:
1) There is poverty in the land of naija caused by high unemployment. As a result, many are doing websites not necessarily out of passion but because "na to do anything to survive". Thus those who don't know, will claim they know, take the job, then turn around and outsource. In the end, such projects will most likely fail due to a combo of ignorance on the part of the main "contractor" and the client

2) We want things now and forget about the long term (tomorrow). We think that by charging less to get the job now, we are smart. In reality, we should be looking for stuff long term. In other words, how far will 10K (~$65) take you?

3) We wan chop solo, forgetting that in dividing the labor, we can charge more and do more simultaneous jobs, as time we would have spent doing it all is reduced by more than half as we now only focus on what we know best

4) We don't know our worth and even when we do, mostly because of #1 above, we compromise. We forget that in turning down some jobs due to poor pay, we actually gain the respect of the client we have rejected as they will know that we are aware of our worth.

Some have said we should form union and that this would improve things. I don't agree. We just need a reorientation. We need to look at how it all began for us. If the foundation is weak, the house will not stand, if you know what I mean.

Happy Saturday and happy coding!

@lincolnpix:
As you can see, one of the guys whose name has been mentioned, slyr0x, isn't exactly pleased. This has been my point from the get go.

he he, the power of NL
lincoln, I haven't gotten it yet. You can reach me via YIM at udotot25