There are few things that you will have to learn, first is the way of thinking is totally different. If you are designing a website and you get a call from client about some new feature in site that he want, your brain starts thinking about the coding and the easiest way to do it, while for a client it’s just a work that he wants to get done. So never show or tell how you will be doing it, just say it will be done in x days at this price. A small tip here, if you can do that work in 1 day, then tell 2 days. Never tell less time to impress client, you will be only creating trouble for yourself later.

Develop friendly relations with clients, like in free time or when you meet him anywhere, just don’t start talking about work. Smile and talk something good, talking about work and worries all time make a person undesirable. Leave with a tight handshake (softly in case your client is a woman) and again a gentle smile on your face.

Things will not always go well, and in case you are struck somewhere and not able to complete task on time, tell about it to your client. Good way to tell about is saying that you are stuck somewhere or having slight trouble doing it but you will manage it. Bad way is making lame excuses or worst not receive phone call or replying to mails.

So with these knowledge, I bet you will be working like a champ freelancer! Enjoy life.

Most of computer graduates look for job while others smarter ones like me start freelancing before completing their graduation. This is a good practice as it gives you edge over other students of you class both in knowledge and money! Because you will be using everything you learn, its going to be fun making money. This article is for those who will be doing freelancing for first time. I write this from my experience so that you do not make any blunder mistake.

First of all try not to look like you are doing this for first time. Look pro, talk pro and never ever do any work for free. Doing something for free even if its small will show that you don’t have any work and eager to do work even for less money. So always deny doing anything for free in starting, you can always do something for free when you have worked on a project and got paid well then do any small favor like making small advertising banner for free etc.

When you start and take any work for first time, you will try to do at your best. However it’s not always true that what you feel is good is good for client too. Try to read mind of your client, to do this meet him few times at his home or office to discuss things and look around objects, like which color of walls, tiles, furniture, etc and even his car. This should give you a hint about his color taste.

More in part 2 of this article..

When you are doing a dynamic website project, it may need you to make forms to collect user information. Almost every website has contact us form which mostly consist of name, email, comment and phone number etc. These forms are easy to make and data can be sent to an email id or stored somewhere. If all you want is send data to an email id, then all you have to do is write few lines of code and use mail() function but if you need to store the data, story is different! Storing data means use of database and since you cannot read data directly from logging in database panel and reading tables, you will need to make an interface from where stored data can be read. This is where admin panel is needed. Making form and then connecting it to database, setting up admin panel to view stored data requires lot of coding. If you know coding well even then it takes some time to do this, otherwise you hire a programmer to do it for you.

Form tools make things easy for you. This free open source script is not only highly customizable but also works with variety of forms. All you have to do is make the form and then connect it to form tool (installed on your server) and that’s it! Form tool will collect data from the form, store in database and present you in clean tabular and printable format. Connect your form to Form tool is very easy and anyone without knowledge of coding can do it. I think Form tool is one of the best tool for every web developer. Download it free from formtools.org

Stripe background will go well with many type of website layout, so if you need to jazz up a website, all you need is add a matching stripe background. Now question is how to create a stripe background? I know you can do a microscopic work in photoshop using lots of zoom and then making a tiny stripe image and then repeating it using css. This is a time consuming job and when you are in website design business, time means money. Fortunately there are some online stripe generators which do the job very well. All you need to do is input hex values of colors needed in stripe, find tune using slick interface and you are done. You also get a small preview of how the stripe will look which means no more wastage of time in testing. Best part is that when you created stripe in this way, you create something unique. Sounds cool right? Why not try it yourself? Here are few selected stripe generator websites:

stripegenerator.com
kissyourshadow.com/stripe_maker.php
stripemania.com

Suddenly many web designers started discouraging using of tables in layout. It was just like discarding floppy drives from desktop computers and today when we buy a PC, it does not come with floppy drive as standard. However things have gone advance and today there is absolutely no use of floppy drive but think of a case when operating system becomes corrupt, you cannot boot and you mess up with BIOS too. This is definitely a nightmare but floppy can be used to boot in this situation and BIOS can be flashed using floppy. Ok I am not going to talk about this issue as I am not aware of latest hardware BIOS flashing method but I am writing about the importance of tables.

You might have received newsletter in emails and these emails look just like a complete webpage. If you look at the source code of these newsletter, these are created using tables. Email services and even personal email client software’s are not able to render complex CSS files so we have to rely on good old tables method. Its pity that same web designers making newsletter for their client using tables shout that don’t support using tables anymore. In real web pages too there are places where using tables is more efficient so days of tables in layout is definitely no over!

WordPress has evolved as one of the most versatile script; it’s no more just a blogging platform. Earlier it was only used by bloggers but now people have learned how to make fully functional websites using wordpress in few minutes. All one needs is a good wordpress template which is often available for free and with little tweaks here and there, the website is ready. For any simple website requirements, developing it from scratch is a history and wordpress is the sure shot way to do it smartly. Sites like topwpthemes.com have best wordpress themes collection and you can find many varieties of themes there. With each theme, preview is provided so that you can have a better look at it before downloading. Although we all know how simple it is to install a Wp theme but installation method is also described on this site with good illustration using images so that even non-techy people can also understand it immediately.