OT Questions

Tue Oct 16 10:54:56 EDT 2012

On 10/15/2012 9:05 PM, Dwight Hutto wrote:
> Like a lot of people here, I'm trying to build a web development business.
> I'm starting off by building a profile on a freelance site.
>
> I would like some honest opinions(don't be too harsh), about my approach.
> I'm looking for a team effort to analyze my marketability.
>
> This is just my prototype freelance portfolio:
>
> https://www.odesk.com/users/~01710ac049863018eb
>

I'm not sure whether or not this is a troll, but I'll bite.

If you're going to ask for people's opinions on your work, I would try 
to keep the negativity in a list to zero. I'm relatively new to this 
list and the tirades that you've gone on have been childish at best. 
Doing that and then turning around and asking for useful feedback (if 
you're genuinely looking for it) is not going to yield much.

Now that that's over..

I couldn't get to your oDesk profile, got an empty page. That *could* be 
caused by the dead zones that I'm hitting atm, but I gave up after a few 
tries.

I then went to your website and here's what I can see from a glance. 
This isn't meant to be harsh or slag you personally, but learn what 
you're doing before you attempt to create a company to help others. If 
you *do* know what you're doing, use your site to showcase that. Nobody 
will hire someone with a business site like your current site:

* You have a bloated, 50+MB gif serving your page contents. That's just 
bad for obvious reasons.
* There's no DOCTYPE declaration in your HTML.
* You have <div>s mixed in pre-<body>
* You don't have a <head> container
* You have embedded music. Not only is this a bad design choice from a 
UX perspective, but it's also causing the client to load more.
* You have *no* SEO
* You have commented out HTML
* You don't have any design sense (not a personal attack, I don't have 
any either).

My suggestions:
* Take courses (free or paid) on web development. Udacity has a few good 
ones.
* Apply your learnings to your site. Showcase what you can do and what 
you know and what you can do.
* Look for a designer partner, someone who can make your work visually 
appealing. The visuals are the first impression (after initial load times).

Now having said all of that, if this is a troll, I feel rather foolish.