It feels oddly empty and voided: my schedule that is. I have a couple of projects to look forward to, but like any other new job or career situation, this one is taking its sweet time loading up on things to do. I have officially taken the plunge into freelance and have a little too much time on my hands. Wait, no scratch that. I have all the time on my hands that I used to want before I quit my job. Aha! As Im looking around at my online presence, I see no shortage of tidying, organizing, and clarifying that needs to happen before I start to see a lot of work. Not that I dont deserve it - I do, but the website focus is changing from Here I am to somewhere between that and Let me work for you!
I have a couple of major things going for me - Im on a site platform that I love, Expressionengine. Its all a developer could ever want, and can be made into what the client needs in every situation. (Im not only the hair club president, but Im also a client.) I also have a design flexible enough to change or be seen in multiple browsers, and have developed my templating to allow for changes on a per-situation basis, whether I deem that to be per-page, per-section or per-paragraph. Long or short, Im not limited by my platform or my design, so that leaves limited to my own invention, my ability to self-reflect and be critical, and my understanding of my websites new desired place on the web and how to get it there. Its going to be a long road, but here are 5 preliminary things I came up with, immediately:
Make Blogs more Bloggy
How many Blogs do i have on my site? Two actually. One is called Conceptually Driven and the other is right here, in Rants and Raves. They function like blogs- I work on them like blogs - a post here, a post there, some pictures, etc. The trouble is, they dont look like blogs, as they are missing some of the features blogs truly deserve: Categories links, Recent posts listings and dates, tags, and obvious connections to social networks, for reader posting and to connect with mine. They actually have RSS feeds, but these can only be found by clicking the little link in the address bar. And just forget about my self-SEO..
In order for my blogs to be seen and used, they must be treated like blogs. This is a fairly simple concept that I have clearly missed until now. It wouldnt hurt to make the rest of my site a little more bloggy too - that way you might be able to find my artwork and videos.. yes, I have those too.
Update site content to reflect my latest career move
This, I have already begun in bits and pieces. However, my About This Site page still details how I found expressionengine and how much I love it, which is funny because that conversation is better saved for in-person, or for a site that is experimental and new. My new career is about moving beyond that and saying/doing/making exactly what is needed of an online situation. I do this well, in fact, but at this moment my content has not caught up. About this Site should really say something like This is the home base for all that I do: check it all out. Its otherwise unprofessional. This also includes adding sites I have recently worked on to the projects section and posting testimonials where appropriate.
Migrate my portfolio into a flexible environment
You may not know this, but my artist portfolio section is contained within a module called "Image gallery" which while sounding promising, is even more limiting for its look and feel flexibility and the ways I am able to use it without hacking it apart. As an Expressionengine developer, a capable one at that, I need to drop this unflexible, antiquated module and migrate my images into a system that is more like the rest of my site, with all its flexibility for templating and for optimizing the page for search engines. As someone who can create major functionality in a page, there is no excuse for using this limiting module that was included for folks who need more pre-existing structure with their development. I thrive on flexibility and fresh ingredients, and this has neither.
Integrate live Twitterscapes
My newest, most favorite art form, Twitterscapes, exists behind a lock and key, so that nobody can reach it and get at it before Im ready for them to. How utterly sad. How can they be shared, loved, experienced, or understood by anyone but me while sitting back here waiting to be explored? Truth is, I want them to be live, but I need the code to work server-side before they do go live. The solution? Get off my duff and expose the most innovative contribution I have ever come up with, live, on my own website. While people are able to see Twitterscapes now, they are not live or driven by anything dynamic, but static representations asking viewers to imagine seeing them live. Not acceptible. The vitality of Twitterscapes exists in their representation of live Twitter data - without this Twitterscapes don't represent the full idea. These need to be live on my site, and then I need to take the sharing from there.
Make leads easier to get
So if someone wants me to develop their website, what do they do? Go to my side bar and fill out this leedle tiny form? Ha ha, No. They see that its so small and so geared towards art that they just move along and find another developer, one who has a huge contact form geared towards development, inquiring about scope, existing sites, budget, etc. That person clearly wants the project! Well I do too, so I need to do that too. End of story. My site wasnt created to generate leads, but now its my best bet of getting them independently of others projects they dont care to work on.
Not only do I need this contact form, but I need to make it in an obvious place like http://carolinecblaker.com/contact and have links to it wherever I can justify them, with calls to action that suit my look and feel. They need to be placed at the tops and bottoms of project/portfolio areas and on my sites header. This is a lot of places! It will require some rethinking of design and layout, just a little bit, but this is the most important part of having a website as a developer - if you dont need leads, you probably dont need to develop websites at all.
Now since Ive posted these here, this is how I am going to remain accountable - I am going to go through these in the next two weeks and make sure they are done to the best of my understanding.
Is there something I missed? Please feel free to let me know below.
