Manifest Development Redesign 2011: The Portfolio
For the second part of this series, I want to talk about putting my new portfolio together. The portfolio is the most important area for a web developer because it gives the user insight into the type of work he or she does, so I wanted to do it right. It’s now in two places, and is managed a completely different way on the backend. Â Let’s take a look.Manifest Development Redesign 2011: The Homepage
[singlepic id=7 w=320 h=240 float=right]Â Last week I launched a redesign of my freelance site, Manifest Development. I started developing it in late November, and wanted to revamp the site completely from design to content. I got some feedback from my students during one class when we were talking about the importance of a small business’ website, and I wanted to integrate that, as well as some of the new things I learned over the last two years. I’m planning on making this a multipart series, and in today’s installment, I want to talk about the most important part of a website: The Homepage.
Lots of Stuff at Manifest Development
This week I made several announcements over at Manifest Development:
- The Manifest Development Referral Program: I’m offering a 10% referral fee for anyone who sends work my way. That means if I land a $1,000 project, you get a $100.
- New Site Launch- Wallkill Body Shop: I’ve launched a new website this week. Wallkill Body Shop needed a new website to promote their business.
- WordPress Site Specials: I’m running a couple of specials on WordPress driven sites for a limited time. Check ’em out!
If you have any questions about my or Manifest Development, feel free to get in touch!
Random Code Generator 1.0
A couple of weeks ago, when I officially launched the redesign, I mentioned the forthcoming release of a plugin I wrote for the redesign. Random Code Generator is that plugin. I needed a plugin that generated a random promotional code and stored it in a database. I’m currently using it on Manifest Development to manage various promotions and ‘prizes’ I have going on, to make sure people can get a code, but cannot use it twice. Here is the official description:
(more…)Burke Website Launched
Cross posted at Manifest Development
After several months of design and development, I am proud to announce the launch of Burke Catholic High School’s new website. Burke first came to me back in November seeking a new, more interactive, easier to update website geared towards current students, parents,and prospective families. In development, I created the first iteration of Minerva CMS, a content management system powered by WordPress and geared towards high schools.New Design at Manifest Development
My freelance company, Manifest Development, has a new face! Over the last couple of weeks I’ve been working on a new website that accomplished a few specific goals: have a cleaner design that integrates the new logo, have a theme that is more general and easier to update, and be more blog friendly. I think I’ve managed to hit all of those goals.My Thoughts on Less Accounting
At the beginning of the year I wanted to find all-inclusive, online accounting software. That is, something that kept track of invoicing, other income, and expenses. As much as I loved Zoho Invoices, I needed expense tracking. So after doing some research, I settled on Less Accounting. Here are my thoughts.
Pros:
- You can import contacts from Highrise, GMail, or Basecamp
- It has expense tracking
- You can upload receipts to go along with each expense
- It’s relatively cheap
- The dashboard is pretty nice (though total income and expenses would be nice)
- The reports features are nice
Cons:
- Recurring invoices do not auto send – why even have recurring invoices if I still need to go in and send it myself?
- Recurring invoices weren’t working at all for 3 weeks after I first started using it
- Email messages do no format- All of my emails when sending invoices have been on one line no matter how I format it
- No “Mark Invoice as paid.” I actually have to go in, add a payment, reenter all the invoice information and then associate an invoice with the payment
- Import Highrise contacts also wasn’t working for a while after I first started using it. I reported both this and the invoices twice
- In order for my recurring expenses to have a name, they must be associated with a contact, so all my recurring invoices say “No Contact” instead of the reference name, like “Monthly Subscription to X”
- I had to fix one of my recurring expenses to actually get it to show up, and my other ones still aren’t because I need to fix them, which isn’t very intuitive. If I set the 7th of each month as a recurring expense, it should show up on the 7th (or maybe even a few days before)
- An “Include Paypal link,” while not detrimental, would be nice. Zoho Invoices had it and I used that quite a bit
All-in-all I’m not to impressed by Less Accounting, despite all the rage about it, and the fact that they sponsor a site called, “We All Hate Quickbooks.” The design is nice as are some of the features, but they took some liberties on user experience (or poorly designed their databases), leading to some pretty big grievances.
Did I miss something? Am I doing something wrong? Comments are open.
