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so you want to be a web designer? »

web designer (common state of being)Spending hours hammering a site into submission, to be valid code, yet look the same on IE6, 7, 8, FF, Opera, Safari, Flock, Netscape, Camino, and god forbid, AOL. Yeah, it’s what we do.

Dealing with slow paying clients, clueless clients, and the dreaded “I know how to make a web page” clients. Signing a contract with specifications for a web site, then having the client ask for more and more, and think that it was included in the original specification. Yup, all part of the profession.

Having a client send you chocolate. Having one send you an extra $100 in their payment, with a note saying “thanks for all the hard work”. One nice part of the career you have chosen. Rare, but nice.

Reading and reading and surfing and reading some more, just to stay on top of the “latest”. Learning to code properly, learning the latest CMS, learning scripting code. Learning to say no. Learning to set business hours for clients to contact you (you learn this early on, they WILL call at 11pm if you answer an email at that time.) And then… more reading. Blogs, tweets, books, pdfs, videos.

Advice? yeah… I’ll be dispensing some here on these pages, links, business advice for web designers, especially those noobs who are getting laid off from their jobs these days, and figure, “hey it’s not all that hard, I have a copy of frontpage or dreamweaver, let’s hang out a shingle!”. Yeah, you people.

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20 Sources of Daily Inspiration for Designers | Acuity Designs »

20 Sources of Daily Inspiration for Designers | Acuity Designs.

Keeping clients motivated throughout the design process | Graphic Design Blender »

Keeping clients motivated throughout the design process | Graphic Design Blender.

What do you do to keep your clients all fired up?

13 Ways to Challenge Yourself in Your Career as a Web Designer | Vandelay Design Blog »

13 Ways to Challenge Yourself in Your Career as a Web Designer | Vandelay Design Blog.

4 Reasons to Track Time on Projects »

4 Reasons to Track Time on Projects.

Always always track time, even on a flat fee project. You will be amazed. For an even greater benefit, on three projects in a row or concurrently, label the time too! Discovery, research, code, design, learning, testing. Then adjust your pricing if needed. Yes it will be a pain to do, but you will benefit in the long haul. See what you are getting paid in a per hour scenario. If you are new or an old hand at this, just try it for 2 months, and see if your per hour value goes up. It will.

MockFlow: Online Wireframe Tool »

MockFlow: Online Wireframe Tool.

Looks pretty good. If you try it out, write it on up and we can do a guest post for you!

Getting Started with Drupal: A Comprehensive Hands-On Guide »

Getting Started with Drupal: A Comprehensive Hands-On Guide.

For those who need a more robust CMS. I’ve heard that templating up Drupal is much tougher than WordPress. It is on the list of things I want to try out, and maybe this guide will help me get going on the right foot with it.

WordPress Simple Paypal Shopping Cart Plugin | Tips and Tricks »

WordPress Simple Paypal Shopping Cart Plugin | Tips and Tricks.

this may be of interest to some? I might just try it myself!

10 New High-Quality Free Fonts for Your Designs | Freebies »

10 New High-Quality Free Fonts for Your Designs | Freebies http://bit.ly/965VyT

oh oh oh ! i hear the screaming now.

HTML5 Boilerplate – A rock-solid default for HTML5 awesome. »

HTML5 Boilerplate – A rock-solid default for HTML5 awesome..

Looks pretty good! so if you are a-hankering to get a leg up on your competition by using html5 specifications and CSS3, here ya go!

ManageWP.com | Manage Multiple WordPress Blogs »

ManageWP.com | Manage Multiple WordPress Blogs.

I’ve been using this for about a week. I manage 5 of my own blogs, plus 8 client blogs. This allows me to check in to one place and see what is going on over at the blogs. One client blog is very active, and I approve comments from new people for them, determine if a comment is spam etc. and with this tool, I can do it from one interface. So far, so good. I am interested in their self hosted one, gives me a bit more secure feeling than a 3rd party one.