commanderW - 8:35 am on Dec 13, 2009 (gmt 0)

well, reading my own post above, I feel a little foolish. Given the reality of my situation, It sounds way to authoritative. Pompous even. Possibly hurtful. Let me say that of the sites I have up, only one is a paying client that I don't know socially. When all is said and done I have made about 6$ per hour of work. It's not really my place to say what's good or bad.

I've been feeling rather proud of myself of late. Because in fact the principles I learned and applied to what I think of as the 'code up' page, have born fruit. My paying clients site shows up in google serps for many of the searchable words on their site, in the first 3 pages. More show up if I ad the initials of the city they are in to the search query.

It's kind of funny. There are many very ethnic terms ( for America), and some of them are misspelled (in english). For one of these, my clients page shows up number one in the serps. In fact, out of the whole world, this site is the only result that actually contains that exact misspelled ethnic phrase :);):-) I made pdf's of these resuts and emailed them to my client. Then I went over and explained them. I didn't lie. I told them that I thought I should bring their spellings in line with what the google suggested or guessed terms were, since these were probably the most commonly used spelling that surfers were using.

On the other hand, I recoded a site for a friend. At the time they were trying to advertise and sell their product online. I did my 'code up' thing. Later they decided that they weren't going to bother selling their product this way. Instead, they wanted to use it as a showcase for their product, where people could see what it is that they do. I advised them to find a photoshop web designer, what I have come to think of as the 'pretty picture down' school. Every time I discuss doing a site with someone, they start out with a flash vision, etc. So I've gotten irritable about it. However the friend has a legitimate need for this kind of site. Designers who can do it have a unique and hard won skill. I hope I didn't insult anyone.

As for the 'rat maze' appellation - since I am currently doing web design for less than minimum wage where I live, and my own 2 sites aren't making me any money at all, well, all I can say is that I still have some resentments from the days not long ago, when I was simply a web surfer. But I don't need to insult anyone who can afford to buy themselves a new computer or even a new pair of shoes, off the money they earn on the web, when I still have to work a day job.

So, with this caveat, let me say that the previous post actually describes not what I know, but what I hope and pray is the perfect home page :S