Primarily, it wasn’t enough to draw visitors. Parents tend to frequent sites that have parenting information from articles and advice, to links to great deals. Without offering that content as well, Squibbles wasn’t a place you would go because kids are not online that often until they’re older.

The other problem was that the average parent going online with their kids is a target audience that’s very difficult to market to. They typically only learn about things through other parents, school materials, or parenting magazines. Without any time to market or promote the website, it was left online only to serve as a good portfolio piece.

I’ve recently moved servers and during the transition, I made the decision to take the website offline. I’ve kept everything in the event that I want to restore it at some point, but for now it’s no longer needed.

The time necessary to develop a clean, well-organized, well-written application that adheres to the standards set by the W3C and community can often surprise clients and leads.

An example…

Client asks for the ability to manage contacts and assign them to groups. They’re mock up shows a list of contacts on the left, and list of groups on the right. Sounds like a simple drag and drop to add contacts to groups.

What clients often overlook is that we have to solve a lot of additional problems – each one requires more planning, design, development, and testing time.

In reality, this simple drag and drop becomes:

• Create drag and drop support.
• Add support for adding new groups.
• Adding ability to create new contact.
• Ability to edit groups?
• Ability to edit contacts.
• Ensure newly added group may have contacts dropped on it.
• Ensure contacts may be removed from group.
• Ensure groups may be deleted, with a warning first.
• If not using browser default, warning dialog must be available
• Warning dialog alone takes more time to create/integrate and design.
• Remove all connections to contacts from deleted group.
• Prevent duplication of group names.
• Ignore contacts dropped on groups they’re already in.
• Handle any database query/traffic errors properly.
• Use some method of keeping contacts list short enough to drag.

In the web development world, that entire process would utilize PHP, Javascript, CSS, XHTML, MySQL, and the JSON or XML data formats. That’s SIX different technologies. This is the type of work involved in items that often seem as if they can be “turned on” or “plugged in”.

We try to test the most common systems. However, there is an infinite number of combinations of web browser, browser plugins, operating systems, screen sizes, display types, firewalls, computer assistance software, etc. When so many possible combination are possible, the probability of a conflict somewhere is high.

It’s important to realize the level of work we’re involved with. A single select box with nested options may take a few days to create and test.

Many times, fellow developers choose to do it quickly rather than do it right to please a budget, sometimes it’s the clients choice. Yet what eventually happens, is that decision comes back to bite. It may be in the form of failure to extend well, failure to work after a upgrade. Even a poorly written / documented application can cost more to fix than it ever would have to do right the first time.

Thank you!

The new policy from January requires that any projects above $1k have an official specifications document and (optionally) mockups that define the official scope of the work. This document needs to be started by the client as they document what they want, and finished on our end as we document the work and technology involved.

But what happens is that it’s often a chick-or-the-egg scenario where clients need an estimate before they can spend time doing a spec, and we need a spec before I can do an estimate.

Beginning immediately, we’re slightly modifying the policy:

We will provide a pre-spec estimate for initial approval. This estimate will clearly be labeled as pre-spec, but will not guarantee the final cost. Once approved, we will require a spec document/material to be submitted by the client. We’ll review the documents, add the technical portion, discuss the revisions, and then provide a final estimate. Before work begins, a signed copy of the project spec and the final estimate must be returned.

To help explain why this document is necessary and how it can be created, please read the “Project Spec Requirements” document.

These policy changes will not impact existing projects at all. Existing clients should expect a bit more preparation prior to new projects, but with a better quality return in the end. Please contact me with any comments, suggestions, or questions.

These changes will be included in a revised copy of the client contract, which I will provide to all existing clients within the next few weeks.

Discounts

In the past I’ve offered several different types of discounts, and almost none of them applied during 2008. What I’ve also realized is that projects that have been heavily discounted tend to become a burden rather than an enjoyable project and the client and the project suffer the effects.

Policy Change #1: As of January 1, 2009 all previous discounts will no longer be available. Only a single discount will remain and it will be applied by request only. Clients will receive a $20 per hour discount for work that is beyond forty hours of work in a calendar month.

IM/Phone Time

Another issue that has arisen is clients conversing with me over IM. If I’m currently working on their project already then it’s not an issue, but if it’s for technical support or general discussion of non-urgent nature then it distracts me from my current task, and concentration is extremely important when programming.

Policy Change #2: As of February 1, 2009, all non-urgent IM and phone conversations that are longer than ten minutes will be billed at the minimum billing interval of fifteen minutes, meeting rate. This covers the “transition” time that occurs when I need to stop my current task and participate in the conversation. Urgent conversations are only those regarding serious technical problem that will prevent a client from using a live website or web application, or a time-sensitive question usually for estimating purposes.

Unless IM or phone is necessary, I encourage everyone to use email.

Automated Testing

Quality of work has always been a priority and in an effort to improve the quality of application code I produce even further, I will be implementing stronger release automation guidelines for larger projects.

Automated testing allows developers to build a suite of tests that may be run together to ensure that every function of the actual program is returning exactly what it should be in each situation. As the test collection grows the usefulness increases exponentially, and if done properly, will help prevent 90% if programming-related issues from reaching the client, and 100% of regressions.

Policy Change #3: For all new applications or components I will begin writing automated code test cases from the beginning of the project. This will require a bit of additional time and this time will be included on estimates, but will help reduce the time required finding and fixing issues manually.

For larger projects that I am the lead on, I will also enforce an automated deployment system so that we can deploy projects faster and reduce issues caused by human error.

Specifications Document

I began this business by requiring a description of the project in detail to avoid feature creep, and as my typical client type changed from one-time small business to recurring work from firms, I began relaxing this restriction. Over the past year I have seen that this document is essential for all large projects. I can’t calculate any exact number, but I’ve likely lost weeks worth of time due to gray areas in feature definitions. When I have to decline to add a feature that the client was expecting but I was not, it impacts the relationship, and the client perception of the project.

Although it’s more work for the client to provide this document, it save time, money, and relationships.

Policy Change #4: For all medium to large projects I will require an official specifications document from the client. This document will describe the expected functionality of each page and element within the project. It may use wireframes, text, or both. These documents will serve as guides for the project, and any feature that wasn’t described will be considered out of scope.

Contracts

A similar situation has been client contracts. I need to ensure that all clients have signed and returned their contract prior to work beginning.

Policy Change #5: All clients who do not have a signed contract on file already must sign and return a contract. All new clients will be required to sign the contract. Existing clients must sign and return the revised 2009 contract.

Subcontractors

I’ve had two subcontractors in the past few years and unfortunately the projects they were involved with became nightmares. I’ve learned that my main reason for my success is in the quality of work and my level of experience and knowledge with web technologies. When someone else comes in there’s a serious clash of styles, and an obvious lack of understanding of best practices.

Policy Change #6: No PHP subcontractors. I’ve lost one very good client because of one relationship and almost lost another. I’ve sacrificed thousands of dollars to repair projects and relationships.

Down-payments

For all new clients, I’ve always required a down-payment of one-third the estimated project amount. This practice helps ensure the new client is serious about the project and helps reduce issues with non-paying clients. However, I’ve learned that receiving a significant payment prior to doing work becomes demotivating during the project. It’s essentially a situation where there’s no reward after doing the work. However, something is still required to help prevent payment issues for new clients.

Policy Change #7: For all new projects below $20,000 for first-time clients, the down-payment required will be no more than $1000. Pricing guidelines as to what requires a down-payment have changed slightly, but they’ve all been reduced.

Post-Project Technical Support

Technical support has always been an issue because it’s something that clients should have access to, but it takes time to supply. I’m sure that my policy will change over time, and it may even vary between clients.

Policy Change #8: For projects that are likely to require technical support, time will be included in the original estimate unless you request otherwise. In this scenario, it will be billed at the current meeting rates. If you request that it not be estimated, then it will be billed an a standard hourly basis at the current PHP Development rate. Exceptions are if the question is a quick question that doesn’t require research on my part.

Aspen Framework Upgrades

All projects that have been built on the Aspen Framework have typically received free upgrades as the framework improved during last year. Now that the framework has reached a level of stability (it’s currently in release candidate stages), no projects will no longer receive free upgrades unless the project will continue development indefinitely.

Notes…

For those with web hosting accounts with me, I am going to spend time this Spring to convert everyone over to a recurring credit card system. I’m spending so much time invoicing and chasing down late payments that it would be beneficial for everyone.

My goal for 2009 is to try to reduce the number of distractions I deal with every day. I’ll officially be ending support for any personal projects except those under the Trellis Development umbrella.

Thanks all for a great 2008 – let’s make 2009 even better!

2009 will be an interesting year for Trellis Development as well, as a few special items are coming sometime during the year, some sooner rather than later.

Most folks know how much I listen to music while working, and in keeping with tradition I thought I’d post an quick analysis of music I’ve added to my library this year. I’m currently at 5,562 songs that I’ve collected over the last ten years. That’s about 18 days of straight music without any repeats, consuming a good 33.35 GB of space.

I have not really enjoyed many new-release albums since 2000, so many of my new faves are old albums I’m discovering. However, each year I rank my new top five from the previous year. This year I added some actual math to everything.

I have rated every single song in my library on the iTunes 1-5 scale. Only 100 songs are fives, 600 are fours, etc. It’s hard to really impress me. Here is a list of the top five new-release albums from 2008 with their average rating score:

Seventh Tree – Goldfrapp (1 Five, 9 Fours) /10 = 4.1 (Winner, 7 songs are in top ten play counts of these albums)
11i – Supreme Beings of Leisure (2 Fives, 5 Fours, 4 Threes) /11 = 3.818
Seven Lives Many Faces – Enigma (3 Fives, 6 Fours, 7 Threes, 3 Twos) /19 = 3.47368
Sirens of the Sea – Oceanlab (0 Fives, 6 Fours, 7 Threes) /13 = 3.4615
Viva La Vida – Coldplay (0 Fives, 5 Fours, 7 Threes) /12 = 3.4166
Sehnsucht – Schiller (2 Fives, 5 Fours, 18 Threes, 5 Twos, 1 One) /31 = 3.0645

Overall, I’d highly recommend Seventh Tree. It’s not typical Goldfrapp, but is still great. For those who know my love of 90′s Enigma can see that the latest album scored horribly. Oh well, let’s go 2009!

What I never considered is the level of support they’d need when attempting to re-use the product. Even though it’s ten minutes here and there, that time builds up, so you need to be able to estimate that out.

If you find it difficult to estimate, then perhaps it would be better for you to offer a monthly recurring fee similar to a retainer. This allows you time to provide support, brain storm about changes or improvements, etc.

It seems that Mr. Shane Duffy decided to write an article that was exactly the same:
http://infosonic.wordpress.com/2007/08/16/bugzilla-vs-mantis

I wonder how many others he’s stolen from me. I’ve contacted him about this, so let’s see what he says.

For those looking for Formsaver updates for the new beta versions of Firefox – I’m sorry that I have not released an update yet but I’m waiting for the first release candidate before releasing an officially supported version.

Since we have a new baby on the way we’re going to be turning my home office into a baby room, at least until we move into a house with four bedrooms. Until then, I’ll be working from a studio downtown along with good clients / great friends Red Studio and Point Creative.

Here’s to a great second year with some exciting projects currently under development.

I will leave AIM open all night/day for those who need to send a message. AIM user: botskonet