Well, as is always the case it seems, I am super busy! I have been doing a fair amount of work for another Guru.com client and it is going along well. I should have this project squared away within a couple of days.
The past few days I took some time to devote to my own properties as I have not spent any real time on any of them in a few weeks. I finally found a good solution to moving www.azzor.com over to Drupal, while maintaining all of the old content and even finding a decent integration for vBulletin. I moved the content/site over, as well as the forums, and upgraded the forums to the latest version, which was a very much needed task.
In the process, much of the old content had to be revisited to make it work properly within the Drupal framework. Between updating the actual code for the posts, and creating and placing the menu elements, I have been very busy getting it all set up. I am happy to say that it is going pretty well! Now I just need to breathe some new life into the site and get the community growing again!
After that, I plan to move WarcraftCinema.com over to a new host and drop my hosting for that server, which will hopefully reduce my costs a bit as the pricing for that server is way out of whack for the level of the server.
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Well, I am happy to report that my first Guru.com project has been successfully delivered! I am pleased with the experience and I hope this is just the first of many great Guru projects.
It was interesting that I landed a World of Warcraft Guild website from Guru.com. I am sure that my direct experience in this arena played a big part in landing the gig. The client wanted to create a custom theme for the Drupal CMS. I worked with my artistic designer to come up with a pretty slick design and then I skinned the Drupal theme.
In the end the design turned out pretty slick! The client is happy and that makes me happy! I underestimated the implementation time a little bit, but it worked out okay. Now I know better for next time!
I will take this opportunity to complain about one thing though, and that is Guru’s fee schedule. In addition to the 2.7% Paypal transaction fee, Guru also hits you for their own 7% fee for using their escrow service. You would think that the fees they charge the vendors would offset a bit of that, but all it will do is encourage my thinking of going outside of the escrow system in the future. Either that or making sure that I bid in padding for those fees in my proposals, which in the end could cost me clients. Either way, it is a lose lose situation.
So without further ado, I present our first custom Drupal Theme at www.redeye-guild.com!
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Guru.com has proven to be trial and error. I have only landed 1 project of the 70 or so proposals I have submitted. I take the time to read each proposal and tailor a proposal just for that project. The sad part is that probably 95% of the projects are never even assigned, let alone followed up on. The end result is you spend a lot of time working on proposals if you take the time to do a proper proposal for each project.
I have also been looking for contract work on Sitepoint. While the marketplace does not get as many projects posted, the likelihood that the employer will actually follow up on the job is much higher. I have posted on a few items on Sitepoint and have already been in discussions with several posters. Hopefully some will pan out!
My one awarded project on Guru is proceeding along. We have the design nearly complete and then it will be on to implementation. Design has taken a bit longer than expected, but the holidays have made it a bit harder to keep in contact with the client.
We are slated to deliver the final product in 2 weeks and we should have no problems hitting that.
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Work