Reply to: Adventures in Crap Casual Work

[petergriffin]

If you are really bored you can still work at Poundland for free. On the plus side, you will stink like poverty so bad, nobody will ever think of breaking into your castle.

[MadDawg]

A few years ago I was driving past a sex shop in a Berkshire town, and I saw a banner in the window saying "website wanted".
Knowing a very little about html, but with some misplaced enthusiasm about being an entrepreneur I decided to knock one out on on a spare webcam I had online at the time.
I walked into the shop to give him a demo, but he looked a bit worried when he saw it. Maybe he was not too impressed.

I never heard anything from him subsequently...

FTFY

[doodab]

A few years ago I was driving past a sex shop in a Berkshire town, and I saw a banner in the window saying "website wanted".
Knowing a very little about html, but with some misplaced enthusiasm about being an entrepreneur I decided to knock one up on on a bit of spare webspace I had online at the time.
I walked into the shop to give him a demo, but he looked a bit worried when he saw it. Maybe he was not too impressed.

I never heard anything from him subsequently...

You're probably the only person who ever went in there after noticing the "website wanted" sign in the window. Even I find that a little scary.

[KentPhilip]

A few years ago I was driving past a sex shop in a Berkshire town, and I saw a banner in the window saying "website wanted".
Knowing a very little about html, but with some misplaced enthusiasm about being an entrepreneur I decided to knock one up on on a bit of spare webspace I had online at the time.
I walked into the shop to give him a demo, but he looked a bit worried when he saw it. Maybe he was not too impressed.

I never heard anything from him subsequently...

[aussielong]

Currently on the bench. Got about five years of war chest but I've been trawling for crap casual work to bring in some cash.

I do an email shot of local companies and trawl classified ads.

So far I have :
- used my crap web design skills to make web sites for an accountant, a perfume importer and a travel blogger (1500)
- used my crap javascript skills to fix a web form for a local chamber of commerce (500)
- given an introduction to powerpoint class to a bunch of secretaries (500)
- set up Moodle for a charity (500 + 100 per month ongoing)
- optimised a dodgy loans website (100 per month ongoing)

It's partly depressing/partly fun/partly f'it I'll give anything a try. Makes an interesting sideshow to updating skills and looking for the next big gig. Combined with cutting costs it's nice to live on what I make rather than use the warchest.

The tiny sums involved really do puEt things in to perspective but may as well be doing real stuff and earning a little bit.

Has anyone else done this kind of stuff or is it just me?

I think this is great. You are the kind of person that made this country great. More people should be like you- resourceful and hard working.

[vetran]

Its not just WordPress, there are other OS tools that are tuned to different requirements and audiences.

[d000hg]

However small business who dont have web presence would be jumping for joy with a nice elegant themed wordpress site.

Fair enough do the hard yards for knowledge but you will find it hard to sell a site for ~ £300-500 when you have to spend loads of time on it.
Thats the wonders and joys of the templates. Quick and easy to turn around

Boring though. Barely even graphic design work - and you need some design/arty skills otherwise it looks crap even if you breath JS/CSS.

Knowing WP itself could be useful if you know PHP, to do more customised stuff.

[BlasterBates]

Well my "hope" is if you know what you´re doing. You can "knock it up". Most of these background gifs and techniques for building menus are things you can copy and change very easily.

In the end I see you´ll develop your own "templates" or shall we say box of tools, i.e. not auto configurable, but snippets of code so you´ll be more flexible.

But yes you are right it would be a good thing to become a Wordpress expert as well, as part of the armoury.

[FiveTimes]

That´s my view I want to build unique websites, I think it´s good to know how to do it well, and get something cool you can then put some logic behind (e.g. php MySql).

I´m not a big fan of these types of websites, accept as simple blogs or personal web pages.

Nice to build something a bit unique you can use for your business.

However small business who dont have web presence would be jumping for joy with a nice elegant themed wordpress site.

Fair enough do the hard yards for knowledge but you will find it hard to sell a site for ~ £300-500 when you have to spend loads of time on it.
Thats the wonders and joys of the templates. Quick and easy to turn around

[BlasterBates]

From my experience, you can't make a nice website using WordPress without doing some coding. Well - you can make a nice website but it will just look like a WordPress site which can put some people off. If you want to use WP to make a more unique site you can very much do so, but then you will have to get your hands a bit dirty.

That´s my view I want to build unique websites, I think it´s good to know how to do it well, and get something cool you can then put some logic behind (e.g. php MySql).

I´m not a big fan of these types of websites, accept as simple blogs or personal web pages.

Nice to build something a bit unique you can use for your business.

[d000hg]

I always use bench time for small projects like those. My favourite was a lesbian dating website. I had a lot of fun knocking out test data for that one.

ftfy

[kingcook]

I always use bench time for small projects like those. My favourite was a lesbian dating website. I had a lot of fun knocking up test data for that one.

Linky?

[vetran]

I've used themes like that for my own site - markup language and so on to do widgets and all that - they are good but you still run into walls and it still (to me) looks like a WP site.

Maybe there are better ones, I used WordPress Themes Loved By Over 170k Customers

That may be the significant point, to most users this applies :

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

This of course is a double edged sword and you are expected to add to it like magic.

[d000hg]

I've seen it done. Some of the themes are, so I am told, very flexible and don't look at all like a WP site.

I've used themes like that for my own site - markup language and so on to do widgets and all that - they are good but you still run into walls and it still (to me) looks like a WP site.

Maybe there are better ones, I used WordPress Themes Loved By Over 170k Customers

[Platypus]

From my experience, you can't make a nice website using WordPress without doing some coding.

I've seen it done. Some of the themes are, so I am told, very flexible and don't look at all like a WP site.