Long drawn out history

I’ve been working inside HTML code since 1997. It all started with Notepad on Windows 95. After that, it was Pagemaker and Photoshop in high school. My experience with Pagemaker and Photoshop and Notepad HTML landed me a full-time job as “Assistant Web Manager” for Midwest Communications in 1999 – just 6 months out of high school.

After a couple years with Midwest Comm., I moved down south to Alabama where I worked as Chief Engineer for Gulf South Communications. My duties there included: maintaining transmitters,  computers, and you guessed it – the radio station web sites. After 7 years, and a short stint as “Web Manager/Partner” at VeriQik Technology; I went out on my own as a freelancer. Not long after that (6 months, 3 days) my current employer: Bluewater Broadcasting hired me full-time as Chief Technology Officer and put me in charge of rolling out their digital platform.

Out of necessity

So for 10+ years I’ve been dealing with “the web” on a full-time basis. What started in Notepad moved to FrontPage. That soon changed to using Dreamweaver. Out of necessity (for my sanity), I’ve googled “Content Management Software”, and I found: Joomla!.

My life changed, I didn’t have to copy/paste snippets of code 432 times when I wanted to change a menu item. I learned right away that having a framework provided me with the freedom to focus on design and usability, rather than improving my keyboard skills with CTRL+C, CTRL+V.

3 years I spent married to Joomla!. It made VeriQik and I a bunch of money. I began to realize how powerful a community of developers was in creating usable software for not only myself, but for my clients. Because of the community I learned how to install Linux and L.A.M.P. I learned a great deal about server optimization, which lead to the realization that hundreds of Joomla! sites will beat the shit out of a server with limited resources.

Out of necessity AGAIN for streamlining a system, I found WordPress. It was leaner, easier for clients to “figure out” (want to create a page? click “add new page”), and the abundance of free themes was enough to “wow” clients for  years!

That was short lived – the free themes part anyway. Most of them suck. There is no support, and every time there was an upgrade it broke. Ugh. Yet again, I was tired of an inefficient system.

Out of necessity [again], I googled: “WordPress Framework” and found the Thesis theme.

Total comfort and ease

Are you kidding me? I can create a web site, using WordPress, that DOESN’T break when I upgrade the theme? I dropped $187 right then and there!

Since then, have made over $75,000 skinning the Thesis Theme for clients. I became a Certified Thesis Designer, and became recognized as an authority in the community. I got on the forums, I help out on Twitter, I frag with Chris Pearson on Call of Duty: Modern Warefare 2, I get paid a salary to roll out Thesis sites for my employer. Life is great and I’m happy guy. It’s because of WordPress and Thesis, that I can pay my mortgage, child-support, and for a 17 foot bass boat.

Talk about a perfect fit.

With all the contributions to a community I feel like I’ve found my niche. I love the fellow devs, I enjoy the prestige of being considered an all around “awesome Thesis guy”.

Who do I have to thank? Matt Mullenweg and Chris Pearson. Two guys that helped me learn how to use a MORE EFFICIENT system!

July 14, 2010

Seeing Matt Mullenweg (creator of WordPress) order the boot of  Bill Erickson from codepoet.com caught my attention on Twitter. Which then led to the-single-most-horrifying-day-ever.

• Watching Matt and Chris Pearson duke it out on Twitter was horrifying.
• Listening/watching to them during a video-cast was gut-wrenching.
• Seeing Matt give away free GPL based premium themes for those who switched from Thesis was – well heartbreaking.

Two guys who have allowed me to be my own boss and make a name for my brand – at war. My dear friend Cynthia LaLuna tweeted “It’s like watching mom and dad fight“. Exactly.

During the threats of lawsuits, the argument became a trending topic on Twitter AND two clients emailed wanting help switching from the Thesis Theme to the Genesis Framework.

My heart aches. I refuse to turn  my back on the two pieces of software in which I make my living…

Once again, necessity is the mother of all paychecks

Out of necessity I have decided:

1. Chris, you are wrong on your stance about the GPL, but right for wanting to protect your property
2. Matt, you are wrong to act like a stark-crazy-lonely-housewife protecting your “baby”. Instead of giveaways and name calling via Twitter – handle it outside (and by outside, I mean court)
3. WordPress + Thesis just WORKS. It’s fast, efficient, customizable, and easy to maintain. Plus it’s what clients WANT
4. I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for community driven software: like WordPress

That being said, I’m going to make a business decision and no longer work solely with Thesis.

There are other WordPress Frameworks out there which have had my attention, and I need to help my clients (if they so choose) to switch to another WordPress theme.

It’s hard enough watching mommy and daddy fight. I don’t want to feel bad about being at daddy’s for the weekend while mommy tries to pay the bills.

After all, taking care of necessities is why I’m even here.

UPDATE: 7/22/10

It’s done. Chris Pearson and DIYthemes have made Thesis split-GPL. Which is 100% acceptable with Matt Mullenweg. Split-GPL means the proprietary Java-scripts, images, and CSS included with Thesis are still property of DIYthemes – and you cannot re-distribute without paying for them first. This gives DIYthemes enough president to go after you if you try to “rip them off”.  However, the rest of the code is open-source and can be freely distributed.

I hope to see code contributions from the community to help make a great product even better. Maybe, just maybe the WordPress community will stop calling us Thesis devs “snobs, assholes, douchebags, leeches, posers, etc…”

You can read more about it on Mashable.

Now – back to my regularly scheduled programming. Pun intended.

Few things:

1. I’m no longer a freelance web designer.
2. Instead, I work full-time as Chief Technology Officer for company in Montgomery Alabama.
3. My work schedule looks like this: Develop WordPress sites using the Thesis Theme to make this company money.

In other words: I build, maintain, develop, and run web sites that operate on WordPress and the Thesis Theme.

Sounds a bit like freelancing eh? It is, except I can eat daily and pay my bills on time.

Why:

Alas, the old gregrickaby.com (aka “The Old Girl”) was built to generate leads for my freelancing career. Since I no longer need to generate leads; I’m taking this web site into “blog” mode. With the release of Thesis 1.8, it seemed like the perfect time to make the transition away from “HEY BUY A CUSTOM THESIS DESIGN FROM MEEE!” into “Hi, I do this for a living and would like to share my knowledge with the community”.

It’s liberating, but will probably piss-off all those bloggers who have listed this site as a “Top Thesis Designs You Have To See Before You Die“.

What Now:

The tutorials will remain (in-fact, there are more coming both here and on Art Of Blog), but I cannot say the same for the rest of the articles. I also have a re-design brewing, so look for that soon too. I will continue to PWN with The Times my super-awesome Thesis Skin. I have to “clean up” this site. I’m going to use the default Thesis Post Images – so every post has to be changed.

C’est la vie, I have re-booted and so will gregrickaby.com.

(and yes…you’re looking at Thesis 1.8)

I’m starting a grass-roots movement to start a Thesis Convention. You can find out all the information here: http://thesiscon.com and on the Twitter Hashtag (yeah, it’s got a hash already) #thesiscon

I need you support! Take the quick six question survey and get on the mailing list.

WordPress 3.0 Beta 2 is slated for droppage next week, they are pushing hard for developers to finish up the list of over 200 bugs left before the big 3.0 release on May 15th. They are “sprinting” through the bug list this weekend and it sounds like beta 2 will come late Monday/early Tuesday. If you’ve ever wanted to code with the “big boys”, now is your chance! Check out the list of devs hoofing it over the next 3 days, including Matt Mullenweg himself!

Last week, I showed you an in-depth look at what’s new for 3.0 and it still appears the list of features and MU integration is still on track for the big release. I’ve been putting Beta 1 through it’s paces with Thesis 1.7 and The Times skins, and everything is working nicely.

If you’re beta-testing WordPress 3.0, make sure you download the nightly builds often, as they contain the latest code. To do so, just click “Upgrade” and then “Download Automatically” from the WordPress Dashboard.

Google has posted a blog entry which goes into short detail how web publishers need to start monitoring their websites. Google’s blog post speaks volumes about the importance of site maintenance, optimizing WordPress, and mirrors what I’ve been saying since January regarding web hosts in my post Shared vs Cloud Hosting.

Back in late December 2009, I moved over to cloud at VPS.NET and look at the graph below:

Getting this site off the shared Hostgator account, not only dropped Google’s crawl time by 100%, but my Pages Crawled Per Day DOUBLED! I see another decrease in load time by upgrading to Thesis 1.7 as well.

Here are some tools you can use to start optimizing your WordPress site:

• Page Speed, an open source Firefox/Firebug add-on that evaluates the performance of web pages and gives suggestions for improvement.
• YSlow, a free tool from Yahoo! that suggests ways to improve website speed.
• WebPagetest shows a waterfall view of your pages’ load performance plus an optimization checklist.
• In Google Webmaster Tools, Labs > Site Performance shows the speed of your website as experienced by users around the world.
• WP-Optimize, keep your database pruned by eliminating unnecessary overhead caused by Post Revisions, and extra Comments.
• W3 Total Cache, there’s none better at caching WordPress – plus it integrates with CDN’s.

Also it doesn’t hurt to remove unused or deactivated plug-ins!

LESS BLOAT FTW!

Mmmm Beer Girls.

I’ve been designing web sites in some form or fashion since 1999, but January will mark 6 months without the safety net of a full-time job. I’ve learned a few things; but one of the most important is what I like to call: Rate-to-Pay Quotient.

When you bill per-hour it’s easy: Hourly Rate X Billable Hours = Actual Rate

What happens when you bill a flat rate? $500 / Working Hours = Actual Rate

The problem lies within the “Working Hours“. Working hours have an infinite number of variables, so let’s break it down:

32.5 hours on a $500 project. Let’s do the math: 500 / 32.5  = $15.38 per hour

That’s more like “9-5″ money than the glorious lifestyle of a Freelancer huh?

Q. Why not just bill hourly?
A. Good luck with that. Studies show, less than 20% of potential clients are willing to work on an hourly pricing model.

Q. Then how do I know what to charge? Can’t I just make up a figure?
A. Do some research first! What are other designers in your niche charging? What are there abilities? Can you match their abilities? If so, then charge what they charge. Another really good way to look at it is, pretend you have a job interview with Acme Incorporated, a Fortune 500 company with offices all over the globe. You wouldn’t walk in and demand the CEO’s salary would you? Of course not, you have to pay-your-dues first. The same principle applies to Freelancing.  Just because you know some HTML or own Photoshop doesn’t make you qualified to charge $95 an hour.

Pay your dues by doing crap jobs for other freelancers or design shops. They/We are always looking for “grunts”. Not only is it a great way to gain experience, you’ll start making contacts with folks higher up on the food chain than you.

Ultimately it’s up to you what you think you’re worth, but heed the advice of an old dog.

Q. So I have to work S*IT jobs? Come on, I’m better than that.
A. With an attitude like that, you might as well just forget it. Seriously. Stop reading this blog and go do something else.

Q. Can I raise my rate? When will I know I can?
A. Absolutely you can raise your rate! I’ve raised mine four different times this year! Use the Stress-to-Rate Quotient:

Current Rate / Working Hours X Sleepless Nights X Boiling Point = New Rate
I raise rates when I feel completely overwhelmed and underpaid. Usually the final straw is some douche-bag client who thinks it’s “OK” to work me like a helpless pack-mule.

Q. How do I tell my current clients my rate went up?
A. Start a newsletter. Email your clients monthly with updates about your company and/or changes in your life etc… This not only reminds them that you are alive; but it will also bring in business as they remember, “Hey I know a web designer, and I work done…”

Simply word it like, “Thanks for being a loyal customer! Business is really starting to take off, and because I want to continue serving my core group of clients (like you!) I’ll be raising my rates to $XX.XX per hour starting next month on the 1st…”

I’ve have done this FOUR TIMES this year and NOT ONCE have I lost a client. Period. In-fact, almost all of them reply with “Congratulations!!!”

Bottom Line:
Put in your time, work your way up the company ladder, and ask for “a raise” only when you reach a boiling point.

Bonus Advice:
The more you charge, the better clientele you attract, the less you have to work.

Ok Mr. Freelancer. You think you know Thesis and want to start charging for your “expertise”. Before you pull an hourly-rate out of thin air, take a moment and read this:

Based on per/hour – By Greg Rickaby

$15 = You buy a Dev copy of Thesis and blog about some “tips & tricks”
$25 = You can manipulate CSS without using Thesis Design Options
$35 = You can master the OpenHook plug-in and get re-tweeted by @pearsonified
$45 = You stop using OpenHook and master custom_functions.php
$55 = You know how to build additional widgets and place them accordingly
$65 = Using a custom_page_template, and some jQuery you create a site that doesn’t resemble Thesis
$75 = You can convert PSD’s, Mockups, and Wireframes to Thesis in less than 8 hours
$85 = You build a solid custom options/admin panel to run in tandem with Thesis and are Double Mule Certified
$95 = You build a functional skin, and blog about topics that serve others, not just your bank account
$100+ = You have a team of designers, your own office (your spare room and/or Panera don’t count), and start developing your own Themes and Frameworks

After 11 straight hours of (uninterupted) coding v1.2 is ready for download.

Options Panel:

• Removed extra “save button”
• Removed post count from Breaking News Box
• Added HTML & PHP functionality in Vanity Box
• Added Debugging option

Back-end:

• Updated documentation

Bug Fixes:

• Added VivaThumb code to Breaking News Box
• Changed documentation to reflect Featured Video code
• Fixed multiple categories displaying incorrectly in Homepage Teaser Boxes

Download The Times Now

Just 12 days after I released The Times, v1.1 is ready for download.

What’s new?

Options Panel:
- Refined and styled to match Thesis
- Category drop-downs
- Footer “Vanity” section

Back-end:
- Featured content slider is smarter and handles video better
- Image slider now supports videos too
- Slimmer code for faster loads
- VivaThumb integration with ALL sub-loop generated images (with caching!)

Front-end:
- 6 Selectable styles
- PSD for drop-line.gif so you can customize further

Bug Fixes
- Several IE7 & IE8 CSS fixes
- Set overflow to hidden on Tabbed Module and Module #2
- Featured content slider would display Video AND Image
- When custom field was set to “video” Thesis would show the video in the Multi-Media box

Don’t forget on Monday we are going to move everything over to ThesisThemes.com – if you already have a log-in there you don’t need to do anything. The Times will show up in your list of available downloads.

Go get your copy now! The Times v1.1