photo credit: Nikita Kashner

Great post down at NetStrife talking about Things to Look for in WordPress Themes. There’s lots of good advice in there which you can really apply to any technology that has stand-alone themes, not just WordPress. So, what does the article recommend? Here’s a quick list:

• Fast Loading Time: You don’t want your blog to feel like a snail, so try to go for a lightweight theme that you can load your own add-ons into.
• Widget-ready: Widgets make it really easy to add your own bits to different sections of the blog. Without these you have to mess with code and that’s not always something users can manage.
• Search-engine optimized: I’m pretty sure that how you rank in search engines is important for you, so try and pick a theme that is optimized for search engines.
• Valid markup: Some may argue that this isn’t necessary especially as widgets you introduce may break your validity, but it’s always good to start from a valid position if you can, making your site as accessible as possible
• Prominent advertisement spots: If you’re planning on selling advertising on your blog, make sure the new theme has allocated a good position for these slots as this is what advertisers will be looking for.
• Clean design and layout: The easier your blog is to read, the more traction it will have with your audience resulting in higher visit rates and lower bounce rates
• Colours that suit your blog topic: This one is easily overlooked. It’s important for your blog’s colour to suit the theme of your  blog. For example, pink wouldn’t suit a live event video streaming website, but would look great on website about your love life.

I’ve started getting my themes from FreshPress themes because they score highly on all the points above, but there are quite a few themes out there that will work too.

There’s much more on the post, so pop down and read it.

A customer is standing by the vacuum cleaner display. The Sales assistant approaches the customer and ask “are you looking for a upright or cylinder?”

Which letter best describes the selling skills?

• Product knowledge know what you are selling.
• Acknowledge customer- make eye contact
• You now establish the customers need & wants
• Match the products to the needs & wants
• Ensure the customer is satisfied.
• Now close the sale
• Take the money!

Great post from Leo’s Blog. That’s a great acronym to remember what you need to do.

• Create link clusters within your blog
• Rework HTML title tags of trafficked posts
• Invite your readers to connect with you on StumbleUpon and Facebook
• Save your best posts for the best times of the week
• Edit your post one more time
• Stop writing about yourself. Start solving problems
• Subscribe to the feeds of your industry’s major players
• Give a great post to a prominent blog
• Go to the store
• Answer your email and comment questions

Some good suggestions there, which should improve your blogging game better than a set of Callaway irons. The points above are just a summary. Check out the whole post.

People

1. The most important factor in software work is the quality of the programmers.
2. The best programmers are up to 28 times better than the worst programmers.
3. Adding people to a late project makes it later.
4. The working environment has a profound impact on productivity and quality.

Tools and Techniques

5. Hype (about tools and technology) is a plague on the house of software.
6. New tools and techniques cause an initial loss of productivity / quality.
7. Software developers talk a lot about tools, but seldom use them.

Estimation

8. One of the two most common causes of runaway projects is poor estimation.
9. Software estimation usually occurs at the wrong time.
10. Software estimation is usually done by the wrong people.
11. Software estimates are rarely corrected as the project proceeds.
12. It is not surprising that software estimates are bad. But we live and die by them anyway!
13. There is a disconnect between software management and their programmers.
14. The answer to a feasability study is almost always “yes”.

Reuse

15. Reuse-in-the-small is a solved problem.
16. Reuse-in-the-large remains a mostly unsolved problem.
17. Reuse-in-the-large works best in families of related systems.
18. Reuseable components are three times as hard to build and should be tried out in three different settings.
19. Modification of reused code is particularly error-prone.
20. Design pattern reuse is one solution to the problems of code reuse.

Requirements

23. One of the two most common causes of runaway projects is unstable requirements.
24. Requirements errors are the most expensive to fix during production.
25. Missing requirements are the hardest requirements errors to correct.

Design

26. Explicit requirements ‘explode’ as implicit requirements for a solution evolve.
27. There is seldom one best design solution to a software problem.
28. Design is a complex, iterative process. Initial design solutions are usually wrong and certainly not optimal.

Coding

29. Designer ‘primitives’ rarely match programmer ‘primitives’.
30. COBOL is a very bad language, but all the others are so much worse.

Error removal

31. Error removal is the most time-consuming phase of the lifecycle.

Testing

32. Software is usually tested at best to the 55 to 60 percent coverage level.
33. 100 percent test coverage is still far from enough.
34. Test tools are essential, but rarely used.
35. Test automation rarely is. Most testing activities cannot be automated.
36. Programmer-created, built-in debug code is an important supplement to testing tools.

Reviews and Inspections

37. Rigorous inspections can remove up to 90 percent of errors before the first test case is run.
38. Rigorous inspections should not replace testing.
39. Post-delivery reviews, postmortems, and retrospectives are important and seldom performed.
40. Reviews are both technical and sociological, and both factors must be accommodated.

Maintenance

41. Maintenance typically consumes 40 to 80 percent of software costs. It is probably the most important software lifecycle phase.
42. Enhancements represent roughly 60 percent of maintenance costs.
43. Maintenance is a solution– not a problem.
44. Understanding the existing product is the most difficult maintenance task.
45. Better methods lead to more maintenance, not less.

Quality

46. Quality is a collection of attributes.
47. Quality is not user satisfaction, meeting requirements, achieving cost and schedule, or reliability.

Reliability

48. There are errors that most programmers tend to make.
49. Errors tend to cluster.
50. There is no single best approach to software error removal.
51. Residual errors will always persist. The goal should be to minimize or eliminate severe errors.

Efficiency

52. Efficiency stems more from good design than good coding.
53. High-order language code can be about 90 percent as efficient as comparable assembler code.
54. There are tradeoffs between optimizing for time and optimizing for space.

Research

55. Many researchers advocate rather than investigate.

I’m sure there are things there that most of us can relate to. I have to add that book to my reading list

• Use your salary as funding
• Turn common complaints into a business plan
• Make your boss a beta tester
• Take advantage of your company’s reputation
• Convert your employer into a business partner

Interesting ideas, especially as more and more companies are encouraging entrepreneurial behaviour in their employees. It’s a bit counter intuitive, but the reality is that the synergies effected through entrepreneurial behaviour can be instrumental to encouraging growth of both sides, and this can apply whether you’re in a company producing indoor lighting fittings, or components for the Space Shuttle. Read the whole thing here.

(Thanks to WorkConnexions for the link)

1. Write tests before writing the code
2. Use static analysis tools
3. Practice “good citizenship” by paying attention to how well your objects interact with the outside world
4. Avoid indulging in speculative software development
5. Simplify essential complexity and kill accidental complexity
6. Challenge programming conventions
7. Embrace single level of abstraction principle
8. Leverage existing platforms with languages targeted at specific problems and applications
9. Learn every nuance of the languages you are using
10. Change your perspective and consider “antiobjects“

Phew . . I actually typed those out on my notebook computer was reading them off my desktop. There’s some definite wisdom in there. I don’t know if any of your cringed because you were guilty of breaking some of those in the past. I know I have. Read the complete synopsis here.

• Cookie Poisoning
• Hidden Field Manipulation
• Parameter Tampering
• Buffer Overflow
• Cross-Site Scripting
• Backdoor and Debug Options
• Forecful Browsing
• HTTP Response Splitting
• Stealth Commanding
• 3rd Party Misconfiguration
• Known Vulnerabilities
• XML & Web Services Vulnerabilities

The white paper also goes into some advice on how to code defensively and avoid these issues, namely:

• Never trust any information that comes from the client, and never assume anything about it
• It is always easier to secure simple login than complex logic

Although a bit basic, it makes interesting reading. Read the whole? white paper? here.

I tend to apply this yearly principle to mortgage rates in particular. There are a huge variety of rates around, from fixed rates to variable rates, from interest repayment mortgages to fixed capital repayment mortgages and new products are being developed every day. There’s also a pretty competitive market out there with a number of institutions vying for your custom.

Morale of the story, don’t just sit on a mortgage. If you’ve had it for longer than a year, then re-evaluate your position and make sure you have the best deal on the market.

Things were a bit more complicated for my wife as she was running a company called The Joke Shop before she got pregnant and we moved to the Isle of Man. So besides her personal tax affairs there were also the company things that needed sorting out. Unfortuantely she had a dodgy accounting taking care of things for her and he pretty much left her in the lurch once she told him she wanted to close down the business. Today, she recevied a penalty letter for a substantial amount because some paperwork hadn’t been filed. As she stopped trading around 2 years ago you can imagine how the penalty has grown and compounded into a sizable sum, so she was in the middle of a panic attack when she called.

Now, there are quite a few causes of anxiety, and some can well develop into an anxiety attack. But the best way to overcome a panic attack is to share the problem with someone you trust; which is why she got straight on the phone with me.

My advice when dealing with tax issues (well, most issues really) is to take a step back and take stock of the situation. Many times problems which seem insurmountable are simply a result of miscommunication between different parties. In this case I suspect that some paperwork got misfiled and the penalties should be cleared by bringing the tax authorities up to date. Being frozen in a panic can only exacerbate the situation as it interrupts the flow of communication that’s the number one way of resolving these sort of issues.

So always remember to take a step back, take a deep breath and re-examine the situation. Sometimes things aren’t as bad as they seem.

• What is freelancing? Looking back on how the term came about and what it means today
• Branding Yourself. Presenting the right image. Considerations when choosing a name, logo and website
• Where do you find work? A quick round-up of some places and message boards to look for work
• Quoting and Estimating. What is the process for winning the work? What you need to keep in mind while quoting and estimating
• Rebilling other services. When and how. Interesting point about the pitfalls of doing this.
• How much is right?? A hairy topic for new freelancers. How much should I charge? What is a fair price.
• Invoicing. What your invoice needs to look like and things to watch out for
• Getting Paid. Chasing payments is one of the hard parts of freelancing. Here’s what to expect
• Recognising Trouble Clients. Read this section twice .. then read it again. There are some gems in here
• Scoping, Delivery and Timescales. These are critical to a successful delivery
• Service, Accessibility and Saving the Day. Key factors that help you win repeat work
• Expansion and Becoming a Full-Fledged Business. What are the next steps? How do you grow this into a great company

If this a road you’re planning on heading down, read the post carefully. It’s applicable to anyone who wants to grow their own business and be their own boss.