All entries filed under “Life as a Web Professional”
Thomas Boelskifte, the person behind the Nordic ExpressionEngine Users website that I posted about a couple of weeks ago created and released a free magazine called exp:magazine.
In his announcement blog post, Thomas explained his idea behind the magazine and what his plans are. He’s also looking for help writing articles to put in the magazine.
The first issue is available now as a free download and it contains content from the Nordic EE Users website to get started. Thomas hopes the community will submit articles for future issues.
Sounds like a great intiative and good luck, Thomas!
For the last few days I’ve kept returning to the Corporate Culture statement at Ogilvy & Mather (yes, that Ogilvy). There is, of course, a lot of common sense information in there for businesses of any size. But there’s also some in there that applies to how we should handle ourselves, treat others and generally act in a community.
My favorite section is “What We Admire in People.” Here are the first two paragraphs:
We admire people who speak their minds. At the same time we admire people who listen more than they talk, and make a real effort to understand views that differ from their own. Candor is a virtue; arrogance is not.
We admire people who work hard, who are objective and thorough. Lazy and superficial men and women do not produce superior work.
This goes as much for an advertising agency as it does for an online community of web designers and developers. Especially the part about candor and arrogance.
Read the entire Corporate Culture document at the Ogilvy & Mather website.
This week Mike Boyink of Train-ee announced two new training classes that will take place in March in the great state of Texas.
Both the Beginner to Intermediate Training class and the Add-on Development Class will take place in San Antonio, Texas the week of March 21, 2012.
The main EE class will be taught by Mike and the add-on development class taught by Erik Reagan of Focus Lab.
I came across the Nordic ExpressionEngine Users site through their review of my MySQL and ExpressionEngine video. It’s a very specific site for scandinavian EE developers.
We love ExpressionEngine, and were encouraged by many people, to do a site where developers and customers in Scandinavia could find each other.
Very cool.
Lea and Emily at the EE Podcast are collecting stories about your first ExpressionEngine website. From a tweet:
What was your first #eecms site? How did you get into EE? What did you learn? We want to hear your stories! Email feedback@ee-podcast.com
Back in July, I wrote about my first ExpressionEngine site, the mistakes I made and how I didn’t really understand how EE worked so I underutilized it. I’m sure my experience wasn’t any different than a lot of people, but what’s your story? Write it up and send it to Lea and Emily.
Mike Boyink explored on the consequences and challenges of taking on a “failed project.” This isn’t a project that you take on and somehow it doesn’t work out. This is picking up the scraps of someone else’s failed project and fixing it. That, in two words, is tough work.
Mike says he receives a lot of emails asking for help on failed projects:
Over the years I’ve responded differently, from simple one-line “no thanks” to more involved responses declining the work. I thought I’d write up a more detailed blog post both to record my thought process in responding and as way to have a link to send out in the future when these requests come in.
Lots of great advice in the article, especially about increased costs. I’d recommend you charge a higher hourly (or project) rate for these types of projects simply because they’re riskier and, as Mike points out, more difficult to assess.
Read Mike’s entire article: Taking On a Failed Project
Tomorrow, the final An Event Apart of the year wraps up and leaves behind some amazing talks. I attended the conference in October in Washington, D.C. and, as expected, I was treated to some passionate individuals sharing great information.
If you haven’t attended the conference this year, one of the best places to go for conference talk notes is Luke Wroblewski’s website. Luke speaks at many AEAs and takes compact, thoughtful (and bullet-listed) notes on the other talks.
In his archives, you can see all of the AEA notes he’s written. Go through, find your favorite topics and then read through the notes.
Our friends (and long time advertiser on the site) Pixel & Tonic are hiring a PHP Developer on a contract-to-hire basis. Do you love their add-ons and want to help make them better? Well, time to spit shine your resume and apply for the position.
Pixel & Tonic is looking for PHP developer who’s a diehard fan of ExpressionEngine and CodeIgniter to help us develop and support our ExpressionEngine add-ons.
Make sure you have great PHP chops and experience developing for EE. Is that you? Apply for the job.
Oliver Lindberg at .net magazine compiled a fun list of potential gifts for yourself or your favorite web designer. Or maybe your favorite writer at your favorite publication on ExpressionEngine.
We’ve asked some of the industry’s leading designers to recommend their favourite Christmas gifts. So if you’re still stuck and don’t know what to get for your geek friends, here are more than 50 gift ideas for your inspiration
Participants included: Paul Boag, our own Fred Boyle, Andy Budd, the wonderful Veerle Pieters and Austinites Trent Walton and Tim Van Damme.
My favorite? The educational mug set suggested by Meagan Fisher.
Read the entire guide: The web designers’ gift guide 2011
King of the Parse Order, Low Schutte, digs up an interesting example where an EE conditional isn’t treated as you might expect. Low skirts around the issue with a preload replace variable. Sneaky, sneaky.
I won’t spoil it here, so first check out the code that Low posted as a gist and then read his explanation below it. But, try to figure it out on your own first before looking at the answer. 
The annual A List Apart Web Design Survey is up and waiting for you to share your experience as a web professional. The goal of the survey is to gather as much information about our industry and the people who make it work. The data is analyzed and the findings will be presented in a future issues of A List Apart. Additionally, the data is released its raw form, so anyone can take it and make cool graphics, charts or–most importantly–teach us something new about our industry.
Here’s the pitch from the ALA article about why you should take the survey:
Just who are these people who make websites? What are their titles? What kind of education have they had? What skills do they possess and what skills do their employers imagine they possess? How do they stay current? How happy are they? How well are they paid? How mobile are they, creatively and economically?
That’s where you come in. You are the world’s foremost expert on the topic of you. Only you know how you do what you do, who you do it with, how well you do it, and how satisfying (or otherwise) you find it
Take the survey now.
Mitchell wrote up a summary of his EECI 2011 talk in a blog post at Solspace. He correctly observes the important position of web designers and developer: we are an important part of the process and critical to it. We hold some power.
How is it that we hold the power? An example helps to explain and convince. In our past, Solspace has served political consultants. The vast majority of projects that we did with these political professionals were consistent with our own politics and ethics. However, one or two slipped through. I realized too late, a couple of times, that we had enabled the wrong message. We had supported the wrong side of an election. We had allowed the power and the money to put down legislation that would have helped The People. We had the power to walk away from the job. And if all web developers had also walked away, the message would not have made it into the world. The People would have been better off. This is the power we hold. We’re the gatekeepers now.
Mitchell is one of the oldest (not in terms of his age) members of the community so he certainly has experience doing great work and important projects to share with us. But regardless of whether Mitchell is part of the EE community or any other community, he is the source of wisdom for people in our profession.
I have two favorite episodes of the EE Podcast when I was co-hosting: the interview with Rick Ellis and the interview with Mitchell Kimbrough. Give it a listen.
People ask me why I’m so critical, or perhaps snarky, about add-ons, websites and services that use the -ee naming convention. After all, you big jerk, your site is called EE Insider.
Touché, touché. Of course, I would argue that this site is different because my site describes what it’s about. I’m not trying to be clever. If anything it’s a boring, uninspired name.
I think the first site to do the -ee naming scheme was Train-ee by Mike Boyink. It’s a good name. I happen to also like Devot-ee and it certainly has a better ring to it than Masuga Design Add-on Shop. Both of these happen to be real words, too.
I do think there is now an odd, unfortunate hastiness in naming your new ExpressionEngine related website something -ee but a lot of add-ons are using the naming scheme to their detriment. It isn’t original anymore and it keeps you from standing out. A clever -ee name isn’t clever at all and now that there are so many you’re being lumped in with the rest of them.
Steve: What’s that add-on again? Something “ee”…
Tim: Hmm…I don’t know there are so many.
If you don’t care about standing out or about marketing that’s okay. But you should. If you want to own your own identity and make it work for you if you create more add-ons, I recommend you keep it simple, clear and without the -ee. It can be clever, too.
A great example are the add-ons from Low. All of his add-ons have simple, descriptive names modified by his nickname.
- Low Variables
- Low Reorder (this used to be Reeorder and he smartly changed it after taking it over)
- Low Alphabet
- Low Seg2Cat
- Low Yearly Archives
Read the entire list of add-ons and it’s a clear message: the add-ons describe what they do, are created by Low and that’s what matters. Low owns his brand.
A different example is Backup Pro by Eric Lamb. Simple and to the point. This add-on backs up your EE sites. Perfect. That’s what I need. A similar type of add-on is Safe Harbor by Tom Jaeger of EE Harbor. The name is original and accurately describes (or gives a feeling for) what the add-on does.
Neither of these backup add-ons are trying to be overly clever with their naming.
Here are more add-on names:
- Champagne
- FireMail
- Store
- Campaigner
- Channel Images
- User
- Favorites
- Assets
- Playa
Look at the add-ons that have won an award from the community. They all have names that don’t share their branding with others: CartThrob (what a great name), Structure and Image Sizer.
You spend hours building a great add-on. Take a few minutes and name it something that doesn’t share your brand with others.
If you are a professional designer, developer or agency and use ExpressionEngine regularly or develop add-ons for EE, you can apply to the ExpressionEngine Professionals Network. There are requirements that you must meet to be considered so be sure to read them before applying.
A new feature of the Pro Net is that you can now edit your Pro Net listing to keep company, contact and other information accurate and up-to-date.
On his blog, German EE developer Thomas Aull shared how he sets up his ExpressionEngine installs to work between development, staging and production. His goal with the setup was to make the config.php and database.php files as portable and flexible as possible.
Note: The article is in German but Google Chrome will do a decent job translating it for you, minus a few glaring and funny errors.
Read the entire article: Mein Staging-Production-Workflow mit ExpressionEngine
Email
Comments
Post to Twitter
Post to Delicious
