Certificates ≠ Experience

-People want to see a certificate
-Don’t trust: certificate = legitimate experience
-Don’t think: they’d rather pay twice as much for the same thing
-Skeptical of talent/ability when examples are right in front of them.
-Don’t research cost of a website

Everyone wants a web page these days. Most people are completely happy using a free service online with pre-coded templates they litterally drag-and-drop some pictures and text to call their own. For those who want to add a little more personalization, a domain purchase (around $6.00/year) will suffice. For all others, there are 2 choices, aside from coding, imaging and creating the site from scratch: Contract a web design firm to make it for you, or get a freelance web designer.

Going through a company to create your site can be a little pricey. Upwards of $400 for a simple site and over $1000 for a flash website. Freelance designers can get away with charging less because they benefit from the profits 100% where a company would have to pay their employees who worked on the project.

Going through Craigslist, I’ve found a few people who were searching for freelance web designers. Working with html, css, javascript, php, and a little my-sql over the past 6 years and having extensive Photoshop CS experience, I figured I would be a likely applicant for this one-time job. I called, set up an appointment, and then was amazed by the ignorance displayed by these two individuals.

When I first met them, they seemed very polite and professional (both are pretty much a given in any meeting of this sort). After talking for a short while, they asked about my qualifications, examples, and experience. I showed them the homepage for a website I made (as a joke) which happened to show good design properties, my deviantart account, and a handful of pictures saved in my photobucket albums.

I told them a little about where I work, and the fact that each newsletter I create is a single-page website. They seemed to be impressed so far until they asked about classes I’ve taken and certifications I’ve gotten. It was hard for them to grasp the concept that I’ve never taken a single class nor had any certifications in the web design/coding field. They then started questioning the legitimacy of my job! “Why would any company hire you without classes or certifications?”

I talked for a total of about an hour going back and forth about my ‘lack of qualifications.’ Then they asked about my age… this is always downgrades my ‘experience.’ When they found out I was 20, and had 7 years of coding/ graphic design experience, they really flipped.

I decided to tell them about my AutoCAD certification and my job at the NRAO in 12th grade. In the end, I figured they weren’t even worth my effort. Some people just assume that if they aren’t capable of something, no one else is.

After they explained a little about what they wanted their webpage to be like, I asked them how much they were planning on spending. I let out a little laugh when they said $200-$300 dollars. They wanted about 9 pages, flash banner (with links) and custom (full screen) background images for each page. I told them they should call around and see what kind of prices they could get a company to charge. I always charge about half of what a company will charge (I’m still making about 40-50 dollars an hour).

Flash websites (even flash banners depending on the intricacy) can start the cost around $700-1000. Simple websites with a few pages, custom graphics, etc generally start around $300-$500. Again, they didn’t believe me. I was managing to stick around and continue the conversation until they started saying I was naive… “You’re too young to understand what you are talking about,” and “Your 7 years experience probably inst as full as someone who’s gone through college for experience.”

I almost flipped a verbal shit on them! First, I explained that smart individuals do not get a Web design degree. The field doesnt pay enough to rationalize all the loans they would have to pay back. Then I realized I was talking to two very dogmatic people. There was no convincing them. I wished them good luck w/ their websites and finding someone to make it on a low-budget. I gave they my number (they wont be calling) as a nice gesture and went along my way.

Just thought I’d share this with you all.

When picking a phpbb host

PhpBB Hosts and Support

How does one decide which Host to invest their time and effort into when creating an online community based on the phpbb open source application? Over the last 8 years I’ve joined many phpbb hosts, established and supplied a basis for my forums to grow and of course, dealt with the administrators and moderators of the host’s Support Forum.

Even though how simple choosing a host may sound, it’s a little more difficult than making a Google search and clicking on the first one with FREE in the title. These days, anyone with a few bucks and minimal coding experience can be a ‘Free phpbb host’. The goal of this article is to educate you on what to look for, what to look out for, and immediate warning signs to indicate a poor host.

Host Support Forums are usually open to the public! Before creating a forum with any host, consider browsing through the support forum. Not only is it a good place to learn a few basics about phpbb forums, but you can also see, not only the consistency in duplicate problems, but the quality of support coming from the moderators and administrators. A good Support Forum will have an easily navigable structure to help get the member’s and contributor’s questions answered quickly and efficiently. If you notice that there are lots of posts ranging over a few days regarding the same problems, then the host probably isnt stable.

Stability in a host is KEY! Members of your communities will not stay if your forum lags (freezes), posts are displayed immediately after submitted, or their new messages alert displays a rediculously large number (in the millions for example). The main goal of most online forums is to get as many members to accumilate as many posts as possible. The higher the numbers, the more successful the forum appears to be. This is NOT the case with a support forum!

If a hosts support forum has thousands and thousands of posts in the General Support section, and is only hosting a few hundred forums, it’s safe to say the host is not stable. I’ve signed up with many forums where the support forum is rediculously off the charts in posts and members.

One other side-fact: Features of a forum are not always good to have. Since phpbb forums run from a my-sql database, any database intensive modifications (mods/features/etc) will cause the forums to slow down. A host which advertises dozens of modifications most likely will run a little slower than one with a few.

Host provided services: database backups. Perhaps the single most annoying thing about phpbb forums, is when an upset moderator (or worse, another administrator) of your forum decides to go A-Wall and deletes all the forum posts, threads, categories, etc. ALL FORUMS except for ONE which I’ve associated myself with charge to create a backup for you. PROPHPBB.COM is the only forum which offers this service for FREE. I can not stress to anyone reading this how important it is to have a backup of your database. There are so many things which could go wrong, and a backup is your key to escaping those stressful times. Below is a breakdown of the perfect example of a BAD HOST.

FreeForums.org: Claiming to be the #1 Free phpbb Host on the web, they have surely proven themselves wrong with their arrogant owner/developer/administrator, lack of knowledgable moderators and their inability to successfully run/operate/manage a phpbb host. This is not a vendetta i have against them, but a reflection on their service.

I guess to start this off: Not everyone can be #1! Anywhere that states they are #1 probably is not (unless backed up by proof linked on their homepage). It’s generally safe to stay away from these hosts.

Moderators are as young as 14 with the moderator status given to them from both a lack of interest from other members, and their personal ties to someone already on the Moderator list. Adequate support is not given half the time, and they believe they can never be wrong. Any dispute between a moderator and member ends in a temporary or perminent ban of the member from the Support Forum! (This is not a professional approach to handling the situation)

Freeforums.org has been blacklisted from many ISPs! This means that email programs such as gmail, hotmail, and yahoo view the emails from Freeforums.org to be SPAM, therefor creating a perminent block of their emails. This is a blatent sign that the owner/developers do not understand how mass email works. By allowing the members to email as much as they want to whomever they please, they set theirselves up for failure in that department.

To add to the endless list of failures, Freeforums.org created a Graphic Request forum in their Support Forum. This was a GREAT idea! Now people would have a place to request a custom banner for their forum, however FF.org placed a rule that only Graphics team members could fill the requests (at the time, they had 1 member who wasn’t all too familiar with photoshop and how to optimize coloration/ flow and design techniques when creating graphics. (over 200,000 members, and 1 Graphics Moderator… do the math – not one of FF.org’s smarted moves).

Being a graphics designer for over 50 clients worldwide, creating more than 1000+ graphics over the last 9 years, I’ve found a sense of happiness and fulfillment in creating graphics for other people. I’m currently a Graphics Creator on a few different forums here and there and a freelance webdesign and graphicdesigner. I created a few graphics for the other members (not being a Graphics designer on Freeforums.org) and that account was perminently banned without warning. One rule of Hosting: If you are going to ban someone, first, make sure its a legitimate reason and second, tell them why they are being banned. I had to email the Ownder over 15 times before I finally got an answer a couple months later.

Now you know what not to look for, lets go over some things which point to a great host. Prophpbb.com is an example of a continually growing host run by the previous owner of EAmped.com! If any of your are familiar with the service given during the time of MdValdosta’s participation, you will already begin to get a sense of nostalgia.

First, the forum if running off the latest phpbb3 package which is fully stable. Unlike other forums, mdvaldosta picks and chooses the mods before installing being careful not to have anything too database intensive. Also, only fully stable mods are being considered as he wishes to avoid hosting problems. (Downtime is at an all-time low. Compared to other hosts, prophpbb.com is flawless in that area).

The support team is impeccable (as stated from the other members) giving complete answers in a timely and efficient manner. 99% of the support tickets are regarding How-To’s (how to make a link, and other instructional questions). Occasionally a newly installed template will have a glitch, but nothing that wont take an hour or so to fix.

MdValdosta also does an extrodinary job at informing the members of any work, installations which are going on (especially if its going to cause some down-time). Since most of the forums are based in the US, he will do database work late nights and early mornings when the lowest number of people will be online. He hired a Moderator in the UK so we can have semi-round-the-clock service.

Overall its a great host. It does lack in features compared to other hosts, but the forums run much quicker, there are minimal problems associated with the host, and of course the database backups are completely FREE.

Please leave replies with any questions, concerns, comments, or suggestions and I hope this proves to be useful to someone.