How long is a piece of string? One of the most common questions I see on IWF and on boards.ie web design and web development forums is the age old question of what should I be charging?. In the land of the freelancer there seems to be three ways of doing things. Fixed rate to do a site Hourly Rate Make up a Quote on the project If you’re offering a fixed rate well you should probably have a look at the hourly rate tables. Factor in the amount of work involved and see if you’re in or around your ideal wages. As to what you should be charging in your hourly rate well you’ve a few...

Its my birthday its my birthday !!! oh wait no its not Its my nephews birthday and he’s a big 1 today. He’s my godson and its times like this that make me homesick. I’ve lost a client … well no not lost a client … the Galway City Council put the St. Patricks Galway website out for tender and well Impact Media came in and got the contract. They are a large marketing / media company based in Oranmore I believe where I’m from so not surprising for an event such as the Paddys day festival to choose them. It stings a bit losing it but it has been a fun few years being...

One thing I hate is when a website goes to all the trouble of making up a nice design (or even just grabbing a template and putting it up) and then they don’t go ahead and create a Favicon or worse still in my mind they use the default one that came with the CMS they are using. ARGH! So what can you do … well really you’ve no excuse there are a multitude of free online favicon generators out there. I however prefer being able to do things from within my trusty version of Photoshop. I’m running Photoshop CS3 and thankfully there is a nice little plugin for it from the lovely...

So you’re either working from a home office or you’re thinking about it … or you’re just randomly reading this cus I tweeted it or something I’ve now been working from a home office for a few years. Before this I tried to do part work from home / part working in the office and it worked fine. I actually ended up being a LOT more productive from home so long as you can make the distinction between home life and working life when working from home. Until now I’ve never had an actual proper home office setup there had always been something there. I moved over with my...

I installed the Hybrid Theme Framework the other day and must admit it took me a little while to realise what was going on with it. Once I did however I immediately threw the man the 25 quid subscription fee for access to the forums. Why Pay ? well he’s putting a lot of work into it so he might as well get something back. 25 dollars equates to 17 euro so I’m happy to help and getting support to questions in a timely manner is a major plus for me (he’s rather active on the forums on there as he should be) So you’re here and you’re probably seeing blue .. a whole lot of...