Work things

A short summary of recent web design and development work and projects planned. And a bit about productivity.

Writing

In recent weeks, I’ve written two posts on my other sites:

• Case Study: Web design and development for Rioz Global
• My first visit to a Sussex Bottle Share evening

I really enjoyed working on the Rioz Global site and the design came together quite early on. That’s always nice because I hope it means that I’ve created something that works well. On some other projects, the design has been tweaked at all stages because I’ve never been quite happy with it. Not on this project.

I really enjoyed the Sussex Bottle Share evening as well :-)

The Perchology newsletter is still going strong, here’s Issue 56.

Web Design and Development

I updated a site running Perch 1 (which is about 8 or 9 years old now!) to Perch 3.1.4. It was a small site so rather than go through the process of two separate updates (→ Perch 2 → Perch 3) and various configuration changes, I decided it was quicker and easier to start with a fresh install of Perch 3. The job went very well.

I helped another developer/designer with Open Graph tags with their Perch site. They couldn’t get these working on blog posts but it was relatively straightforward to implement this.

I’m working on two new Perch sites, one of which is 99% completed. That project is a new website for a client who had a very old self-built site. It’s much better now although the client’s logo really needs a refresh as well. This dictates, in part, the design and feel of the new site so old logo + new design is not the best approach. The client is still very happy with the site and their new membership login area though. It was great to work with the Perch Members app on this project.

I have a big project coming up. A redesign and development job for an existing client with an online shop. The project is a good one but we really need more design input at the start I feel. However, the client wants to do that later. Oh well. Will see how that works.

I met a prospective client with another online shop project but I’m pretty sure I won’t get the job based on a lukewarm feeling from their last email.

Productivity

A short note on productivity. I’ve mostly worked with my MacBook Pro and an external monitor at Horsham Coworking but, rather unexpectedly, I’ve felt more productive with just the MBP screen in recent weeks. I’m quite surprised. And I’m not quite sure why. It does have a nice screen though.

Despite being busy or perhaps because of that I’ve been a bit demotivated on some days recently. The MBP Pro screen change has helped a bit and I’ve also tried to work in very short 15 minute bursts when I feel like that. The Pomodoro 25 minute interval feels a bit too long and 15 minutes feels like I can get something done without losing focus.

OK, that’s it for now …. see you soon.