Oh Holly mother! I never thought of that way. I feel like…..I don’t know how to feel at all.
If you think of that way, it’s quite true. haha.

No prior experience necessary
Word of mouth works best
Doing it once a day is good, doing it twice a day is better, doing it three times a day is best but awfully hard to sustain
Learn a few basic tricks and then do them over and over
Getting someone to pimp your business can increase traffic but also has unintended negative consequences
Some days it’s impossible to satisfy the customers

I must add the differences though,
#1. We don’t get paid,
#2. We don’t get laid,
#3. We don’t get STD.

No offences intended, just a merry quote passing along.

Via: Business2 | Blogging Pro

Every time a customer asks you a question like “How much going to cost to make a website?” or “How much for a design?”, I got a problem answering and most of the time I say, “It depends…”. And most of the time I transfer the call to my senior colleagues or project manager.

Seriously, I don’t know the exact figure and I don’t want to talk about money matter first. Most of the time, I ask why they want the website for, what are they going to do with it, get to know a bit of their requirements and general site audience. Depending on those, you start slicing your time against the tasks and provide the figure. So there is no set price for a website.

Some people think making/getting a website is so easy as 1 2 3. May be so. But it depends alot on how well you want your website to be, what platform or technology to use and many many factors.

I got this article a few weeks back from a friend and I thought of writing about it. Things are so busy this week and just now I can get back to my deferred posts. There is a great article and a good discussion at personified.com : How much should a design cost?, that you should check out for more understanding of how they decide on the cost factor.

One thing to note is that, the author is talking about the design cost based on ready-made CMS platform such as (WordPress, MoveableType etc) and not custom made CMS. More like the whole website functionalities part is not included as it’s open source and free of charge. His figures are only on DESIGN part such as creating CSS, valid code and abit of customizations. Plus he is concentrating mainly on Blog design. For those it costs around US$ 1500 – 2500. That would be around Fj$ 5000.

A blog is quite different from a website in terms of functionalities as well as a requirements. Blogs are more like news post or articles based publishing whereas website are different nature such as ecommerce site, portfolio site, portal site etc. For those kind of site, the cost will go higher because of custom made functionalities and you cannot use wordpress for that (well you can, but not advisable…so I think).

For those kind of websites, you have to start from scratch. Requirement gathering, specifying technology to use, database design schema, layout design, the backend codes, front-end codes, graphics…etc etc etc. Every steps require time and time is money. So the more requirements you have, the more steps involved, the more time you need and the more it’s going to cost you.

I think I’m not the right person to talk about it as I don’t involve in cost decision making but I only involved for specifying tasks and adding time against it. But you get the general idea of how we charge for website design and development. So comparing our (Fiji) design prices with overseas (US – personified.com) prices, we are way cheaper. We make custom content management systems, we use expensive and latest technology – MS SQL + .Net platform. Ofcos’ there are quality factor to consider too. If I must say and be fair about it, we are a bit lack in design quality factor cos’ most of our sites are not valid standards yet. But it’s only a matter of time we improve our quality…ie. our developers’ responsibilities.

You should check this article for more detail explanations: How much going to cost to make a website.

I like the first comment. I must add if (($CMS != “Word Press”) || ($CMS != “PHP/Open Source”)) { echo “price goes up”; }

A friend of mine just now testing with me about gtalk letting you send offline messages. We just notice it today that it’s working. I did check many time before and gtalk didn’t offer offline message system and only offline voicemailing. But now it’s available. It doesn’t come with offline message window but it goes into your email.

I think they still working on it or…no public announcement about the feature yet.

I got this video link from some blog a few days ago and today I revisited again to check for comments.
No, I’m not gonna talk about it and I’m making no comment on that.

I just want to point out this one comment.
It really make my day. Soooooooo funny. LOL.

It’s a comment by dgrey

What kind of society puts a bride in a five million dollar diamond bedecked outfit and the groom in Mickey Mouse ears with a missing ear?

I’m sure every Burmese and everyone who know Burmese Custom will laugh at it. Oh Boy Mickey Mouse ear with a missing ear!!!
LOL Really good one, I never thought of it. haha.

May be I’ll write about Burmese Wedding and costumes stuffs later…

Watch the General Then Shwe’s youngest daughter – ThanDar Shwe’s Wedding.

Over at friendlybit, Emil talks of feed readers being a threat to a design on web. I find it a good article and something to think about. I’ve seen many debates over “Full vs Partial Feed” publishing. I’ve seen lots of talk on “Great Content vs Great Design”. Now Emil brought up another thought on “Users should decide vs Webmasters should decide” and “styling vs unstyling” web trends.

The widely accepted rule was to let the users decide the layout; after all why should we need to download the same design over and over? Design was something the user decided, not the author.

But those content-only sites didn’t live long. First tables, then CSS, enabled users to make sites more interesting and in many cases easier to read.

Everything has pro and con. Sometimes it’s so hard to take sides.

Myself as a user, I like the idea of reading full feed from various site content through feed reader for faster and easier (no need to remember all site urls) accessibilities.

But then again, you lost track of the site look and feel aspect as well as some other factors like aside links, photo galleries, no-feed related content pages such as “about page”, “portfolio”, others articles and even a good comments discussion. You become very unfamiliar with the site and sometimes you don’t even recognize the site that you roll the feed from when you happen to came across.

Not too long ago feeds were introduced. Feeds make it easier to subscribe to websites by separating content from all the “design stuff”. This enables users to decide how your content should look. Proponents often talk about how much faster it is to read content from different sites when they all look the same. No time is lost trying to understand a new design.

Apart from having a great content, site aesthetics is also one of the essential factors of web medium.
So, myself as a designer/site owner, I published partial feed only.
Why? Becos’ I got alot more stuffs to show off than just feed content.
I prefer varieties of stylish medium than a dull unstyled web.
I want my readers not only to taste my writing but also to feel my overall site identity.

What kind of web do we want? What kind of web do you want? Should we go back to an unstyled web where content is the only thing that matters? Did the “content only”-proponents win after all? Is it a “feeds only” web what we want?

In the case of “Users should decide VS Webmasters should decide”, I take it as webmasters are the advanced users and hence they have a chance to change the direction in which they prefer best. ie. If you favor unstlyed web, go ahead and publish full feed. Otherwise, support the effectivness of design aesthetics and force trick the users to the direction by publishing a partial feed.

Oh yes, LONG LIVE DESIGN!

Read Emil’s full article on “Feed – a threat to design on the web” here.

Things are a bit tense here in Suva. People talking about another coup?? There’s gonna be some kind of march tomorrow and also a parliament session going on…or something like that. I don’t know, I don’t care!

Just that I’m so pissed off at the moment with god damn checkboxlist control. The freaking thing took me the whole of last nite till 3:30am to get proper binding and insert working. Now, checked items retrival from database is not binding well. Garrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrh! I just want to trash up the whole laptop!!

Oh and the damn phone at home, it’s not working for two weeks already. Telecom bastards giving too many excuses, like bad weather, too much raining, no technicians blar blar blah! No Phone, No Internet, No Nothing. If I see anyone from telecom rite now, I’m gonna go give a big kick. Arrgghhh!
Anyway, where was I? Oh yah so there is a big fishy fishy going on in Fiji air – the political affair. Some people telling me not to go to work tomorrow and may be on friday too. Good idea, but then I got two scheduled customer meetings tomorrow, so no can do. hmmmmmmmmmmm

PM public addressing on TV tonite at 7pm. Read more on FijiTimes: Fiji PM to address nation, resignation a possibility