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Living in the Cloud

Archives for: February 2011

02/02/2011

Coming soon: New WordPress Blog for Experts

We are living in economically hard times. Customers don’t spend as much money on software development as they did in the past. International coders and programmers are available for cheap rates and it’s hard to compete against these.

I have found that I may be able to make a living by offering my specialized expertise on the international market, even if I charge only low rates. This is possible when I focus on one specific domain of knowledge and when I’m able to optimize my work flow to create more results in less time.

For that reason, I specialized on WordPress. I have chosen this type of software, because it’s a content management system as well as a blogging solution. WordPress is easy to install, runs on almost every web host and there is an exceptional number of free plugins and themes available on the internet.

To optimize my work flow even more, I specialized on WordPress themes only, even if I could also script plugins as well. This gave me an opportunity to focus even more on some special knowledge that is needed to accomplish the task. Creating a Theme for WordPress not only requires good PHP and MySQL database skills, it also needs a very good understanding of HTML, CSS and some JavaScript.

After I created a couple of custom themes, I learned a lot about the system. This makes me now even more proficient in doing this sort of work. Many customers have special needs, it might be a graphical challenge like adjusting a text box or image pixel-perfect to the customer’s needs. It might also be a database challenge like compiling a special set of data from the content stored in the database.

After performing over 30 jobs on vWorker.com and over 40 jobs on oDesk.com, I can say that I have learned a lot, not only about WordPress, but also about these virtual work platforms and my customers. Not all have been pleasant to work for, but finally I could satisfy everyone by completing their projects successfully.

The next step that seems logical to me, is to share some of the knowledge that I’ve learned from these projects with other potential customers. There are some reasons why this makes sens to me:

I did some extensive research on specific problems to solve for my customers. Some of these solutions are not easy to remember if it happens that I may need them again, so it would be nice if I could look them up somewhere.
Potential customers can check my level of proficiency just by scanning the number and topics of problems solved so far.
Other coders may have similar problems and will be able to find a solution for their customers too. I’ve got some good ideas for my solutions from other people’s blog posts, so it’s only fair to return the favor.

To build-up this knowledge base, I have decided to install a separate blog. As software I will use WordPress (what else?) and add some useful information on a regular basis.

So, please stay tuned, I’ll announce the URL for the new blog here as soon as it’s ready to launch.