First Pro Job - Tips?

[mod_frank]

I recently got my first professional web design job for a large company. I have never taken on a job this large so I was wondering if anyone has any tips that could make it go easier? Anything from coding to what to eat in the morning...

Thanks

[Anon]

"divide and conquer", remember? the beautiful of php is that it is simple and it can do pretty complcated work.

php is not difficult, even you may have a large project. you should always use the "divide and conquer" approach, try to design well in the beignning, and always try to break the big project to small units. and every small unit, you will be able to conquer well, it is also easy for you to debug, reuse the codes or update later on.

good luck.

[Anon]

http://www.hotscripts.com good for reference

[Anon]

I'm on the other end, I work for a large company and we often hire contractors.

1) Get your work orders in writing, every time, every change.

2) Tell them exactly what you are going to do before you do it (requirements reviews, design reviews, schedule reviews, etc). It's better to give them too much information about what you're doing than not enough. Be a pest, they'll love it.

3) Quality first. If you can't get it done on time, tell them as soon as you suspect there is a risk, they'll understand. Don't rush it and deliver substandard work.

[Anon]

Spent a lot of time planning the site. Write everything down and make sure they approve it. It is amazing how often the client says one thing and really means something else. If your specs are detailed then you can save a lot of trouble when the product you end up producing is totaly different from what the client was expecting.

[Anon]

one of my favourite tips is to make your own 'script library'. It saves an enormous amount of time, and an enormous amount of hair (as you dont get the same errors twice!) as instead of writing new code out each time, you can just copy and paste from ur library. Each new thing i do with PHP, i add it to my library, and a script that usually takes days, takes hours 😉

Many people do it allready... but just an intresting tip...

[Anon]

get as many details from the clients as you can, colors, nav style, etc.

I like to draw out the entire site, roughly, on paper and show it to the client. Then they can add their input and the whole process flies a little more smoothly...

The only coding tip I have is to put all your forms into functions, then you can reuse and needed and it just becomes a function call...

hth
Bastien