No no no, it’s not another zombie movie. 16 weeks is about how long it’s been since I last updated this blog!
I guess the good side of that means that I’ve been very busy with various projects and have not taken the time to update my blog. The bad side is that, well, I haven’t updated my blog!
Lots of things have happened since my last post.
As of my last post, I had been in talks for a while with Alan Johnson. Many of you in the Austin game development industry should know Alan as he has been in the area for quite a while as Art Lead at Acclaim, and Artistic Director at Edge of Reality.
Well, Alan and I complement each other very well. He’s the graphic and creative genius and I’m the technical guru. It made perfect sense for us to team up in an official capacity.
Back in February we officially created and launched FIFO Studios and hit the ground running. Almost overnight we were working with new clients on varying web development projects.
Since teaming up, we’ve combined our skills to come up with some pretty spiffy sites. Our most recent launch was for the Professional Shooting League, which I think came out to be a pretty nice site incorporating some cool jQuery image transition effects in the header, as well as tabified content, as well as some video added to the mix.
All in all, things have been moving along. We’ve completed several projects with several more in the works. Of course, we’re always looking for more, so if you or anyone you know is looking for a talented and dedicated team, then you should look us up!
Work
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.
Uncategorized Work
As part of my efforts in drumming up new business, I went ahead and signed up on Guru.com as a freelancer. I have used Guru.com in the past as an employer when I was looking for some outside help on a couple of projects.
So I go through the signup process and start off with a Basic account. Unfortunately, having a basic account is pretty much useless. The Basic account is supposed to allow you to search for and bid on projects in your category, but I was unable to find even 1 project in my category to bid on! All projects required the upgraded ‘Vendor’ account to even be able to submit a proposal! So it sounded a bit like a sham to me but thought I would go ahead and give it a shot.
I upgraded my account to Vendor ($150 for 1 year). I was then able to go bid crazy. Let me start by saying there are literally hundreds of projects posted. I filter through looking for a gig that would match my skill sets. On the first day I submitted 12 proposals. Looking through the available projects and submitting bids is a time consuming process. I spent about 90 minutes searching for compatible projects and writing out well thought out proposals.
Luckily for me, I did find a good project lead that has already gotten back with me and awarded me the project! Let’s hope finding work on Guru continues to be this easy! So I have my first Guru gig and here’s to hoping it goes well. I have read some not so great stories of people’s experiences with Guru, so let’s hope mine turn out better.
Work Work
A few months ago, a friend and client came to me about a new business he was getting into. Hill Country Insulation is the business name, and they wanted a web presence. We worked out the details and I begun work on the site. I partnered with a fellow Austinite to do the design and after a bit of time it was all complete. Last night we put the finishing touches on the site and turned it live! The project took a bit longer than anticipated due to delays for various reasons, but all in all it went along quite well.
www.hcinsulation.com
So please check them out for your Austin insulation needs, please check them out!
Work Work
Well, this is something I have been meaning to do for a long time, and finally got around to doing it! I now have a personal services website up and running that details much of the work I am available for.
Up until this point I have kept myself busy with my own projects as well as word of mouth referrals and contract jobs, but now I am looking to expand my business into even more outside projects.
My first step towards doing that is getting this site up and running to show off some of my work and explain who I am and what I can offer to prospective clients. Hopefully this will go a long way towards getting that done!
So here we are! In addition to the site detailing my offerings, I am going to attempt to keep this blog up to date with what is going on with me in my business life. We’ll see how that pans out!
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