Mistakes

My original idea for Mist4kes.com was a big failure.  I didn’t spend enough time developing it, and my goals were too lofty.  I am going to rework my ideas and come back stronger.

Till then, this is my personal blog for ranting, and posting my mistakes.

Friend/Client gets antsy about my fees

My friend (let’s call her JL) wanted to start her jewelry site.  She talked to me about it on 2007, and I let her know that I don’t like to do shopping carts.  I gave her my rates and we didn’t really talk until late 2008.

I decided to use goodbarry.com so I only had to do front end work.  After 15hrs of work, I find out from her that she only has $1000 as a budget and she wants me to give her a discount.

I told her no, but I’d get her cart up and running and we could tweak from there.

She agrees and I don’t hear from her for like a week.

On Saturday morning, her brother calls up and asks me to justify the expenses I’ve emailed her on.

We decide to end my involvement on the project.

Lessons learned:

1. No matter who/what is involved, use a contract. Don’t start work until it is signed.
2. Be very detailed in breaking down hourly rates.
3. If the client is wishy-washy, don’t do work with them unless it’s for the hourly rate.
4. Friendship isn’t a strong motivator. Money is much stronger.

User registration: Update

Hooray for rails plugins.  You download a file, run some commands, and all of a sudden you have a decent login system.  Pretty cool stuff.  It saved me a lot of time, but this learning process is still very slow.  This isn’t a quick and easy process, like installing software on my Mac.

This extra investment of time is what separates the competent from the excellent.

Finally making a decision to go RoR

After a lot of back and forth, I’ve decided that my big project is going to be built on Ruby on Rails.  Sure, I could stick with PHP and whip one out relatively quickly. But the quality of my mistakes would be a lot lower than with working with a whole new language and framework.  Quality mistakes are what this site is all about, so I might as well go Big.

Next thing on my list is to set up milestones.

Lessons from last night’s back and forth:

• Most PHP script packages are horrible.  I can’t say too much about the backend, but the front end is usually atrocious.
• Neuro association works.  I found myself feeling ill when I looked at a WordPress admin.  This is mostly because of a bad experience with it (and the worst client in the world)

One day of inaction

I started out trying to create the site with Expression Engine.  Then I hit some bumps in the road.  I couldn’t figure out how to create pages, so I dug around in the documentation and actually found a very useful screencast.  Things were going good and then I read the license, and realized that I would need written consent from the developers of EE to make the site that I want to create.  Blarg.

Then J contacted me assured me that I could move forward with tweaking our server. Then I started thinking about doing this project in Ruby on Rails instead of PHP. There are so many variables, and I feel like I’m stuck in “paralysis of analysis”.

Lessons learned:

• You can’t assume that someone’s going to help you out.
• Read the license.
• Read the documentation before you poke around.  It’ll save you time.
• Getting anxious over an imaginary deadline sucks.
• Go towards the prize, not away from pain.

Objective: User Registration

I’m going to create a way for visitors to:

• Sign up/Create an account
• Verify accounts with captcha
• Have encrypted logins
• Cookied sessions
• Reset password through email

Oh yes, and all this will be done through RoR.

Sometimes life Zags

My first start up experience has finally come to an end. It is a great product that had very bad timing.  I expected us to weather the storm, but I did not expect my last day to be last week.  I put in some crazy hours, worked around multiple changes, and made some friends along the way.

It hasn’t been a lost because I’ve learned the following:

1. Things can change in a heartbeat.
2. Preparation can be tedious, but it is less painful than being caught off guard.
3. Nobody really fully understands javascript, but it’s not that hard to learn.
4. Internet Explorer sucks, but its quirks can be worked around.
5. Ruby on Rails can be a lot of fun if you take some time to get into it.