If you are, I’m hiring a freelancer to join my team.

What you get

• You get to build great WordPress themes from scratch, for startups, established businesses, bloggers and non-profits.
• You get to work for yourself, anywhere in the world, whenever you want.
• You get a clear specification on every job before you start coding. No guesswork required.
• You get to quote fixed-prices for projects and add-ons, and you get paid as soon as a project is complete.
• You get to focus on writing great code and let someone else focus on generating new business and project management.

What I want in exchange

• Your wholesale rates.
• Be deadline-driven. This is a deadline-driven business and you’re expected to act accordingly.
• Be honest. If you don’t have the skills or can’t meet a deadline, tell me before I add you to a project team. You’ll save us both a few headaches.

Project tasks include:

• Building WordPress themes from scratch using proven HTML & CSS theme guidelines and WordPress best-practices.
• Customizing themes, adding features, updating plugins and helping clients grow better websites.
• Migrating from my development server to live hosting environments.

The ideal candidate will possess the following traits:

• You’re great with HTML5 & CSS3 and have experience building responsive sites.
• You have a portfolio of at least 5 WordPress sites you’ve coded from scratch, without using a framework or a parent theme.
• You’re a full-time contractor, not a moonlighting employee.
• You speak English fluently and are available to chat on Skype for 30 minutes twice a week.
• You have a fast, reliable Internet connection.
• You’ve used Basecamp before.
• You have a working copy of Photoshop. Extra points for CS5 or higher.
• You answer messages promptly, you’re friendly, happy and you get shit done.
• You have a Paypal account to receive payments.

Join the Team

If you think you’d be a great fit, email dave@thinkdave.com with your wholesale rate, a link to your portfolio and at least one social media profile I can look at.

And please remember that I want to work with freelancers, not outsourcing companies.

The post Join the team appeared first on Dave Wilkinson.

1. Secondary Navigation

When you’re designing a static HTML site it’s easy to build menus because changes to the site structure are unlikely (at least in the short term).

But WordPress as a CMS is different. You can save yourself a headache by including the following navigation elements in your design on day 1.

• Dropdown menus on your main navigation
• Sidebar Menus to be used on child pages
• Blog pagination or Previous/Next navigation

2. The Archive Intro

The archive page heading is typically an h1 heading and is therefore important to category, tag and archive pages that don’t contain any other h1 elements. I usually style it the same way as any other page heading, but if you want something fancy you should include it in your PSD.

3. Comments

The CSS-Tricks Comment form. Simple & inviting.

In WordPress you can include comments on posts and Pages, so it’s a good idea to design them unless you’re sure your client won’t need comments or will be using a 3rd party commenting system like Disqus. The basic elements of a WordPress comment template are as follows:

• Headings – these include the ‘Leave a Comment’ heading introducing the comment form, and the ‘xx Comments’ heading introducing the actual post comments.
• Comment Form – The WordPress comment form is fairly generic and usually contains inputs for name, email, website, as well as a textarea for the comment, and a submit button. On some WordPress sites you can also have subscription checkboxes below the comment form.
• Comments – There are countless ways to display a comment but the most common layout uses a small avatar, the name of the commenter (linked if they left their website URL), the date & time of the comment, and the comment content. On threaded comments replies are usually just indented or given a different appearance with a background colour.

4. Featured Images

Featured images are often forgotten because they’re a relatively new feature in WordPress. The idea is that you can attach a featured image to a blog post which can be auto-cropped and displayed in a number of ways throughout your theme. These include:

• Teaser Thumbnails – on blog excerpts a smaller version of the main post image can be a nice touch. Beware of blogs that don’t use a featured image for every post. Things start to look messy when you add featured images to some posts and not others.
• Post Images – – If you’re using a thumbnail on excerpts, you may also want to display the full-size featured image above your blog posts (either before or after the headline area). You may choose not to use the featured image, and rely instead on inline images in the post for more layout flexibility.
• Widget thumbnails – Building a sidebar widget displaying recent posts with a small thumbnail and an excerpt was really popular about 2 years ago. Not so much anymore, but it’s still an option you may want to explore.

5. The Read More Link

The lowly read-more link is actually really important, and acts as a call-to-action to get visitors from a blog post excerpt through to the full article.

You can use the link at the end of an excerpt or byline like this one:

The inline Read More link on wpbeginner.com

Or if you’re feeling fancy you can add a dedicated read more button, like this:

Read more link from The Theme Foundry’s Watson theme

note: your Read More link doesn’t have to say ‘Read More’. Continue Reading, More, Read the rest of this article are also commonly found.

As I said at the start of this post, these are the most commonly forgotten elements I see on PSD to WordPress jobs, but depending on the type of site you’re building, there may be others. If you can think of any please let me know on Google+ or Twitter.

The post 5 WordPress theme elements to add to your PSD appeared first on Dave Wilkinson.

Not every hour of every day is billable.

This is the first harsh reality of freelancing.

If you’re a machine or you can lie to your customers and get away with it, you can bill every hour of every day. You’re not a machine, so I’ll assume you’re an honest human being who does billable work for between 4 and 6 hours each day.

If this is the case you need to accept that you can’t bill everything. Stop trying, and consider:

Pricing on value, not features

• Adding this slider to your homepage means you can highlight new products and increase the number of visits to your sales pages.
• Adding this form to your contact page means you can explain to prospects what information you need them to give you to effectively deal with their enquiry.
• Adding a Content Management System means you won’t need to pay me every time you need to update some of your web pages.

Each of these examples shows how a simple feature can have a lasting benefit for your customers, so base your pricing on the value they deliver, not the time they take to produce.

Every client will need after-sales support

This is the second harsh reality of freelancing.

Every year I send my car in for a service and an MOT. It would be great if the car dealership did this for free, but they don’t. Instead they charge for their time and make a profit doing so.

In the same way, unless you’re fixing a bug or something you missed when you did what you were originally hired for, you must charge for support.

I’ve seen a few methods of pricing for support, but I keep it simple and fair, charging by-the-hour for quick jobs.

But you said price for value!

I did, but putting a value on features is time-consuming, support tasks vary from customer to customer, and support makes up a small part of my monthly income.

You can charge for support by-the-hour, on retainer, using ‘support tokens’, or using value-based pricing. Whatever method you choose, make sure you charge for support. Failing to do so will result in hours spent fixing things you aren’t getting paid for and you’ll go broke trying.

To recap, always charge for the value you’re providing, always charge for support and always remember you’re growing a sustainable business.

The post A simple guide to pricing freelance services appeared first on Dave Wilkinson.

FTP Details

FTP (File Transfer Protocol) lets people like me access your website files on the web. Without FTP access (or SFTP, SSH or some other form of connection), there’s very little a web developer could do to help you modify your website.

• FTP hostname
• FTP username
• FTP password
• What directory is the website in?

Database Details

Not all websites use databases, but if you have a Content Management System (CMS) installed, you will most likely have a database.

• Database hostname
• Database name
• Database username
• Database password

Web Hosting Control Panel

99% of web hosting companies use some form of 3rd party control panel. The most popular are Plesk and cPanel. The other 1% have their own control panel system (why, I will never understand). Having access to the control panel helps you upload/download files, manage your email accounts and generally maintain your website.

NOTE: Control panels are also very dangerous places for people who are new to them. Tread lightly or you may end up deleting your website.

• Control panel URL
• Control panel username
• Control panel password

Content Management System (CMS) Logins

If you use a Content Management System (CMS) like WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, ExpressionEngine, or a proprietary CMS, you’ll have a login screen that gets you into your content management dashboard. You need to know:

• CMS Dashboard URL
• CMS username
• CMS password

Domain Name

Many a website owner has lost their domain name to a domain squatter simply because they didn’t know who registered it and how often it needed to be renewed. Don’t be a statistic.

• Domain name
• Domain registrar name
• Domain registrar URL
• Domain registrar email address on file
• Domain registrar username
• Domain registrar password
• Domain expiry date

Web Hosting

While it’s usually quite easy for a web developer to figure out who hosts a website, knowing this information off-hand will save us precious minutes and make us love you more.

• Web hosting provider name
• Web hosting provider URL
• Web hosting account number

Files

On the day you launch your website, ask your designer for a backup copy of the site files and/or database for your records. You’ll either get this delivered electronically or on a DVD copy. Keep it safe.

• Backup copy of website files and database
• Bonus point: Backup copy of website assets (Photoshop files, images, etc.). Although, to be fair to some designers, they often retain copyright on website assets. It doesn’t hurt to ask though.

Put it on paper

I’m a huge fan of storing information online, but a list like this can be damaging if it gets into the wrong hands. For that reason I’ve created a PDF Document you can download, fill in and print for your records.

Download the website-owners-25-point-checklist (PDF)

The post The Website Owner’s 25-point Checklist appeared first on Dave Wilkinson.

Here’s a quick list of 10 project applications I’ve worked on (or plan to work on) that use Post Types and custom Taxonomies to simplify WordPress content management:

Custom Post Types to build a business directory

Last month I worked on a site for a large agency with offices in the UK, the US and Australia. They wanted an easy-to-manage business directory that shows company offices and contact information for all 34 locations. A custom post type tied to Google Maps did the trick.

Reviewing products and collecting testimonials

I’m inherently lazy, so when it came time to add a review/testimonial system to my iPhone cases website, I wanted to automate the process of collecting feedback from customers and publishing reviews in strategic locations on the website. Gravity Forms collects the review and a custom post type displays it where I want. All I have to do is hit the publish button.

Frequently Asked Questions management

Frequently Asked Questions are a great way to cut down on the number of emails a company receives asking the same questions over and over. So thanks to this jQuery solution and a single custom post type, the post title becomes the question, the content becomes the answer. And the Post Type Order plugin helps the client arrange questions by priority.

Managing staff member information

I worked on a corporate site for a large water company a couple of months ago. They have over 100 management-level employees divided up into divisions and job roles. Custom post types and taxonomies made sorting & displaying their details a piece of cake. I also spotted a staff page built by Kevin Leary that does a great job of filtering the results.

Sliders

For some bizarre reason, everyone wants a jQuery slider on their website. So I built a custom post type to handle content and added some animation using the slidesjs jQuery plugin. Now the client can order each slide, edit each background image, content and click through URL with ease. Of course there are plugins that already do this, but I prefer using post types to manage workflow more effectively.

An Events Calendar

I haven’t built this one yet, but it seems like a good idea to use Custom Post Types to make an events calendar. There are plugins that do this well, but once again I like the idea of the events fitting into the site’s content management workflow.

Portfolio

When Custom Post Types were first released, everyone rushed out and used them to build a portfolio. And they’re perfect for the job, allowing you to filter posts by job type and display complex layouts with ease. I also spotted a great Ajax effect on this theme by Orman Clark, which really enhances the functionality of the portfolio.

Case Studies

I’m currently working on a redesign of my own site (again) and one of the sections I want to add is case studies. The structure of these posts will be more complex than normal pages or blog posts, so I want them managed separately. I’ll also be using the Advanced Custom Fields plugin to simplify and standardise the content layout.

Product catalog

Once again I haven’t done this one yet, but I’m certain there are loads of WordPress sites now using Custom Post Types and Taxonomies to display a product catalog. If you think of a company with 1000+ products, the last thing you want is to manage them using a bunch of static pages.

Content Snippets

How about content that makes up part of the theme, but isn’t actual published content. I’m thinking of things like call-to-action buttons and copyright notices, or anything you would usually use a widget for or leave hard-coded. Why not create a Snippets Custom Post Type and give the website manager the ability to manage anything they want.

Note: The guys at Interconnect/it released a plugin called Spots which does this very nicely.

So when should you use Custom Post Types

I don’t think there’s any rule here, but I use a Custom Post Type when a piece of content is:

• Not a blog post.
• Not a static page.
• Repeatable, i.e. there are potentially loads of content pieces with the same format.
• Complicated, i.e. when there’s a need for meta boxes and other controls that you don’t want displayed on the Page or Post editor.
• HTML-heavy. To avoid having clients wade through HTML in the WordPress editor, I break up content into individual mini-posts.

In summary, Custom Post Types have taken a good publishing platform and turned it into a versatile and intuitive Content Management System.

About time too.

The post 10 applications for WordPress Custom Post Types appeared first on Dave Wilkinson.