Freelance Web Developer Best Practices? 438
SirLurksAlot writes "My last employer had to make a series of budget cuts, and I was laid off. I have been on the job hunt since then; however in the meantime I have begun freelancing as a Web developer. This is my first time in this role and so I would like the ask the Slashdot community: are there any best practices for freelance developers? What kind of process should I use when dealing with clients? Should I bill by the hour or provide a fixed quote on a per-project basis? What kind of assurances should I get from the client before I begin work? What is the best way to create accurate time estimates? I'm also wondering if there are any good open source tools for freelancers, such as for time-tracking and invoice creation (aside from simply using a spreadsheet). Any suggestions or insights would be welcome."
Pirate an obsolete version of Dreamweaver... (Score:2, Funny)
...and you're good to go. Just look around the Web a bit. If they won't pay take down their sites: you'll own the domains.
Good estimates (Score:5, Funny)
First, take your best estimate, then multiply it by two, and then increase the units to the next largest. So, if you estimate something will take 3 hours, tell the client it'll take 6 days.
Re:Learn CSS (Score:2, Funny)
Pretty sure GP meant Java applets. You know, the little grey boxes from the 90s? :)
Re:Trust your gut! (Score:1, Funny)
assholes smell funny? Thanks for the valuable insight!
Public Service Announcement (Score:3, Funny)
Web Developer: Knows how to code in several server-side programming languages, including at least one (and more likely all) of the "p" scripting languages (php, python, perl), how to interact with one or more database backends (mysql, postgresql, oracle, etc), client-side programming languages (javascript, including XHR, JSON, etc); Knows the quirks wrt css in most browsers, knows what a DTD is and uses "strict". Must be able to maintain a test/development server, with version control, as well as maintaining the production web site. Codes to standards-compliant browsers first, then ports to IE, using the magic incantation "Fucking Internet Exploder" as many times as necessary - or more. Probably also knows Java, may also know C, C++, C#, assembler; can ssh to the dev box as necessary, scp files, uses svn or git, has strong opinions about sml, the vi vs emacs wars, knows what a LART is, and isn't afraid to use it.
Web Monkey. "I know Photoshop and/or Dreamweaver and/or Frontpage, and I can drink just as much coffee as a real developer. HTML is too coding! I copied this javascript to do mouse rollovers - isn't it cool? Wait until you see what your site looks like when I do it ALL in Flash. Firefox? No, I use Windows." Sometimes targeted for LARTing by bored Web Developers.
This has been a public service announcement. Please resume your usual trolling^Wdiscussion
Re:Contracts! (Score:2, Funny)
If you're gonna make such an insightful comment.. could you at least wrap the original comment in some <blockquote>'s so we don't need to scroll?