So, about two weeks ago, I shared that I had gotten my first client project. It was a volunteer position with a breast cancer charity in Long Island. I met with the founder and her sister and we hit it off pretty well. I went over the site with them, explaining some of my thought processes in my redesign of their website and got some updated information from them which I ended up incorporating into the site the next day.
Later in the week, the founder had to leave for a few days. She let me know that she’d be gone and she put me in contact with the person who had worked on their current site, which was built using WordPress. I reached out to her via email, and what happened surprised me. She basically related that they were going forward with the site that she’d worked on, which ran contrary to my understanding because on VolunteerMatch, they had advertised that they were looking for a web developer to upgrade their site.
I had looked over their WordPress site using the WordPress Administrator, and my assessment was that it had no prevailing design direction. There were unpublished pages, some with redundant information that was on live pages. There were published pages (some as old as 2015) that hadn’t been added to the menu system, so although they were “live” they weren’t accessible. Pages and blog posts seemed to be confused, and there were several pages with no content (and one with a single line of content).
The WordPress person said that she didn’t want to make use of a website that was built using code, because she wanted anyone at the organization to be able to update the site and, from what I gather, she didn’t understand code, herself. My understanding was that this was specifically why they were looking for a web developer. But, in order to not step on her toes and make her feel diminished, I let her know that I would not then be a good fit for her group. What I bring to the table is specifically a basic knowledge of coding websites, which I hoped to put to use aiding organizations that I felt aligned with.
I let her know that what she really needed then was just someone with knowledge of the WordPress interface, and, ultimately, good editing skills, who could organize the website and write content for it. That wasn’t specifically what I was after – I was seeking a group that needed someone to help with designing websites and writing code, so that I could start to make use of what I’ve been learning at Lambda and through self-study. I told her that I’d be available to help advise if she had WordPress issues, and wished her well.
So far, I haven’t heard from her, but I did get a message from the founder on FB Messenger, and two nights ago, I finally had time to reply. What we exchanged there was interesting, and reiterated in my head what I had told my wife when I had come home after my meeting with them: the organization means well, but they’re disorganized.
So, it remains to see how things will proceed, but I think its been an interesting experience. I tried to remain neutral and informative and help guide the founder through what I thought were the existing options and my rationale for supporting some of them. I haven’t worked on their website since receiving that email from the WordPress person. Once that’s ironed-out, I’ll see if there’s a way for us to proceed. If there isn’t, its still been educational, and it helps me to understand how to proceed with the next group I reach out to, with regard to vision, direction, control and responsibilities.
REDO FROM START 
Solid post man, Im working with my first Web dev. client too (just launched her site yesterday), this is my site I built for her(it is super basic): rvaworks.ca — (she’s my mom, lol typical first customer) Although I built this just with wordpress.com, I was thinking of learning Javascript as my main language. If you dont mind me asking; what’s the benefit to do it your way and code it from the ground up? what kind of clients would you shoot for?
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Thanks, and congrats on the website! It looks good. Do you have previous WordPress experience?
The main benefit of creating a website the way that I did is freedom. Theoretically, I can build anything that I can design (or, if I work with a designer, anything that person can design). Using WordPress, you’re forced to work within the confines of whatever the template you’re using allows. That can be fine, if you find a template/theme that you like. I have a bunch of WordPress blogs, personally, that I love. I created them more as a vehicle for my writing, and because at the time I had no experience coding.
When I have more experience, I’ll be able to build web applications. I work for one right now, we have an EMR (Electronic Medical Record) that’s used by nursing homes mainly in the tri-state area in NY. I’m more involved in interface design and drafting the specs for each module right now, but I want to level up and be able to actually draft actual code to supply to our development team, as well as be able to create my own projects later on.
I’m still very junior, so the clients I’d shoot for are those with more of an online presence need than a complex online application need.
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No I just dove into WordPress with no knowledge maybe 1 month ago. I had a realization that that I should be working on coding and/or software development as that’s something I always thought was really cool. So I learned Python for like 6 weeks prior to getting into WordPress. I built a text based adventure game, was working on a pdf scraper, using regular expressions. Then realized; well I can find work sooner with WordPress. Now Im touching up on HTML, CSS. I have some free time on my hands since I work in forestry seasonally and winter is my down time. I want to get any tech job come next fall when I get laid off as per usual. Just trying to build finished projects, since I dont have post secondary, Or experience in IT prior to what I’m doing now.
So are you mostly working with a GUI (at your job) then as the interface? Do work places like that use a repository like GitHub, or would you need something more private/secure? Do you have a Github?
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Your entry into WordPress is exactly how I did it, years ago. I was teaching myself bass, so I made a blog to share what I learn. From there, I made a bunch of other blogs and then got my wife into it as well. As far as the .com version, its not a hard system to learn. The .org one has a higher learning curve, if you’re looking to customize a site or make your own theme. I haven’t done much with that yet.
It good that you learned Python. Its capable of a lot of things. That’s something I started teaching myself, in January this year actually. Its the reason I made this blog. Then, I slowed down, so eventually, I joined a coding bootcamp, which has been a very educational experience. The pace is fast though, and I’m not young anymore.
HTML and CSS are easy to grasp. CSS is a little more involved. Learning the basics takes only a few hours, but there are a lot of really interesting things you can do with it (with regard to positioning, layout and animations and other visual effects) that do get more involved. Two fantastic shortcut technologies baked into it are Flexbox and Grid. I used Flexbox a lot with most of my projects, and started to incorporate Grid maybe 2 months ago as well.
Definitely try to tackle JavaScript and then maybe React once you feel confident with HTML/CSS (and some preprocessors like LESS, SASS and the like). They’re the building blocks of the internet and you can find a lot of job opportunities once you’ve gained proficiency using them.
Previously, I used applications to design the front-end at work. Originally, I used MS FrontPage (in the early 2000s) then I moved onto Expression Web when FP was retired, and then a combination of Expression Web and Visual Studio. We’re a Microsoft shop, so I stuck with MS solutions to make things easier for my team.
Now, I know enough to make basic interfaces by hand with HTML/CSS/LESS and recently, JavaScript and React. I’ve been cautious using this though, because my drop of experience really pales in comparison to each of our developers’ 20+ years of experience.
We don’t use GitHub at work. We’re a small shop and keep everything on our local servers, a remote datacenter/cloud setup and on the developers’ laptops. They push to our test servers when we’re ready to test application changes, and after testing is complete, they push to production.
On the personal side, I have a GitHub account. Most of my projects are on GitHub. Its something we created early on, at Lambda. I think it was the 2nd week. Outside of my full-time job, when it comes to my personal clients, I use GitHub to host the code, and I deploy test sites to GitHub Pages or to Netlify. That might change later on if something more convenient comes along, but for now, it works well for me.
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