FireWire

Welcome to ProcessWire! Hope your experience has been great thus far (well, aside from this error you're seeing) and thank you for the kind words. 1. Absolutely will be adding it to the modules directory. I'd like to get a couple of tweaks in and iron out any bugs that may pop up, I have done as much testing as I can on my own and I need to make sure that "it works for me" means "it works for everyone" haha. @bernhard had a great suggestion for using hooks. As soon as it's had a little bit of usage I think it will be ready for the modules directory, so your feedback and bug reports are very helpful. 2. Translation engine requests are logged, so check the 'fluency-engine' log. That should help figure more out. If that isn't helpful then try using the network tab under your browser development tools, try translating something, then check the JSON response. Another question- does the translation tool accessed by the menu at the top of the page work? I too have had some secondhand experience with the challenges of adding multi-language capabilities to WordPress. My partner manages a WP site for the company they works for and had to try several plugins, some worked partially, all were difficult to use. Fluency was designed to be better than anything WP has available and those problems guided my work. Feel free to share your story over in this forum post celebrating WordPress.

Clients should always have their own accounts! If a features that a client wants or needs that need a 3rd party service, I present the information to the client, explain the pricing, and let them know that the account will be a service that they subscribe to. I like to emphasize that this means that they have ownership of the service and don't have someone in the middle (like me) charging a premium as a reseller. An example besides DeepL is a service called Smarty, which is an API to work with addresses. I am doing work with a client's CRM and explained that their address data isn't high quality enough to complete the work they need. I told them there's a free 30 day trial, and after that it's $54/mo. It sounds steep, but the client understood that it was an important necessity. It's a cost of doing business for them, just like DeepL may be. There are two sets of pricing for DeepL, the price to use their application, and the price to use their API. There are 2 separate pages for subscription plans, and on the "Plans and pricing" page it has both subscription types. It can be confusing due to how they have it presented. Here's where they have that hidden: I looked at the pricing plans and I don't see anything that would prevent a client from using the Free plan, unless 500,000 characters isn't enough. Then it would be €5.49 to sign up for the Pro plan, and then €20.00 for an additional 1,000,000 characters. So 1.5 million characters for €25.49. If it really came to that I would think that in most cases it would be possible to sign up for one month of Pro to translate the initial large amount of content, and then downgrade to the Free plan with 500,000 characters- unless they're publishing a ton of content per month! In Fluency you can switch between Free and Pro accounts without any issues or additional configurations needing to be made. Hope that helps, but if not let me know.

I was going to create a PR but can you give these a second set of eyes first? Specifically the "processwire-original-wordmark.svg" file. The SVG here on the PW website uses transparency, but in lieu of that I used an equivalent color so that no transparency had to be used in the SVG file itself. processwire_devicon.zip

Well here's a big announcement. The full rewrite is done. I bet you thought I forgot about this project, but nothing could be further from the truth... This is a complete rewrite of Fluency and it has a lot of new features- including a big one I said wouldn't be ready... it's now possible to use other translation services besides DeepL. Currently only two are available, DeepL and Google Cloud Translation. However- Fluency now includes a complete framework for creating "Translation Engines" that power fluency. I'm working on documentation and contributions in the future are welcome! There are a lot of features that have been added. Some I mentioned above, but they're here too. Ability to add new translation API services and a framework for developing them Language tabs now have indicators to show where content has been changed since page load. This makes it easier to see if some languages have not been converted Per-engine configurations. The Fluency module config page will dynamically show you the configurations that are needed for each engine. Translation engines retain their own configurations. It is possible to switch between engines with very little work. Full support for all ProcessWire fields, including TinyMCE. Both TinyMCE and CKEditor inline modes are now supported as well Polite and informative error handling Full UI translation for all Fluency components. Errors, buttons, labels, everything in Fluency itself can be translated and therefore customized. Full caching for translations and language lists. Caching can be cleared on demand. DeepL now has full support for translation features, including formality The module config is much nicer Meta tags for alternate languages can be rendered for the <head> element A language select dropdown can be rendered that reloads the page in a selected language You can easily get the language ISO code as well There's more, I'm probably forgetting some stuff. Check the module code. If you want to see what an overengineered ProcessWire module looks like, check the code. Check the methods in Fluency.module.php. Fluency is now globally accessible using the $fluency variable if anyone uses it. The admin REST API is completely documented as well. I'll be following up with more documentation on building Translation Engines, but it's already started and located in the module's subdirectories. Oh- and all documentation within the module is fully formatted and compatible with the outstanding ProDevTools module API Explorer. I've come to love that tool so I made my module work with it as well. I put all of the markup features I mentioned adding in a Pro module into this one. I'm not going to build a Pro module, all future features are going into this one. So it's all free now and forever. https://github.com/SkyLundy/Fluency Let me know what you think and about any bugs found. Also interested in hearing what other translation services you are interested in, and if there's any interest in someone helping out with building new Translation Engines!

3 hours on the books, issue isn't resolved, hosting company is rolling the entire site back due to possible database data loss. Updating core and plugins didn't solve the issue. Online ordering remained down due to broken connection to the merchant service which worked before a random automated WP upgrade last week. It was already rolled back last week, site stayed online for a couple of days and then went down again. In addition to that, an unstable WP plugin API made their custom theme break and return HTTP 500. The amount of casual breaking updates in the ecosystem is... impressive.

Different site I was hired to make simple text edits and remove some menu items. What should have been a 15 minute job ended up taking an hour because the page editor completely broke and it wasn't clear what was causing it. Turns out a jQuery version changed and I had to edit the plugin code directly. This is just tacky.

Here's a different site I was called in to fix. The design has been screwed up because it never quite looks right and the non-designer that edited the pages didn't click the buttons that change the editor size to "Mobile", "Tablet", and "Desktop" to make sure it would look correct across all devices. The semantic HTML was destroyed because, you know, the <h*> tags are to control the size of the text, right? It murdered SEO because tags aren't being used correctly. I love ads and update notifications that have existed there for weeks and also appear to be broken. I'm not doing anything about it because I'm not contracted for it and who knows what it will break. I do like the power that this design editor gives non-developers though, when things don't look right they can just tweak all of these numbers. I mean, who doesn't know and understand the CSS box model? Surely users can rattle off the differences between px, %, em, rem, and vw. Anyway. The amount of work it takes to make sure a page doesn't look like a trainwreck is, and I mean this, a valuable use of everyone's time- just stack the time I'm getting paid to fix it on top of that. I love WordPress, I make a lot of money off of it.

2nd time this has happened this year, 2nd time I've been brought in to fix it. Two different websites, two different clients of a small marketing business I subcontract for. Directly contributing to loss of revenue due to online ordering being down. Currently managing ~4 WP websites for clients, they're all not a fan. Currently negotiating a contract for a website and an employee at the company said "I f****ing hate WordPress". Feel free to spread the WP love here <3

Also want to point out how the video clearly shows that if you write PHP, a very fast and expensive sports car will show up in your garage. You can't argue with that, it's right there next to his big reaction face.

I stumbled on this video by Primeagen. If you're not familiar, he's a highly experience polyglot developer that uses a lot of different languages regularly and talks about them on his channel. His content isn't really my style (I think this is one of the first "reaction" videos I've ever watched), but I enjoyed seeing him get reintroduced to PHP, especially since he states that he hasn't used it since PHP 5.x. The video he reviews is also a really great introductions to modern features of PHP 8+ that I think more developers should adopt- both because they are totally cool and really do provide a better developer experience. So come for the "PHP is cool again", stay for the syntax we should all be using. The original video was by the same person that @wbmnfktr shared in this comment earlier in the thread, if you haven't watched his other videos, check them out!

Outstanding work @flydev! Oh yeahhhhhhhh baby. Ha! I will always have ProcessWire for websites, and having a proper front-end framework is an absolutely fantastic addition to the ecosystem. I reserve Laravel for true applications, my current one being a bit complex where it will have both the traditional web app for users as well as an API- basically standard enterprise features, and a lot more backend processing. There's been some great examples of developers using PW as a backend for an application, and they're awesome and inspiring. Spend any time with an ORM like Eloquent and you start to see many components of the ProcessWire API as a higher level ORM, which I really dig about it. ProcessWire is the go-to choice for websites, and complex sites with app characteristics, where a full fledged framework like Laravel (or conversely a minimalist framework like Slim) inevitably involve too much overhead for what could be done much faster in ProcessWire. This module and implementation has tremendous value. I shall use both! smdh.

Contributed to the thread over here.

I posted about this separately (missed this one) and this has become a recurring issue with DH. The following are some things (some mentioned above) I've confirmed through experience and information from DH support- Any new PW website uploaded requires a ticket into support to disable specific ModSec rules These rules must be modified for every domain separately When changes are made to servers, those ModSec rule exceptions for all sites will be wiped, requiring another support ticket to DH If the changes DH makes to a server are not disruptive (not requiring a restart) that could affect these rules, you won't be notified The only option for managing this yourself is to disable ModSec entirely in the admin panel, per-site Granular ModSec configurations are blocked, i.e. .htaccess cannot be used to modify rules (which is odd given that the alternative is turning it off entirely) The ModSec rules in place could be configured better but aren't- I have more complex applications on the same server that do not trigger violations Violations can still occur without triggering a 418 response or any error log entries, which can (has) lead to a lot of misspent time In lieu of a 418, access.log may show a request with a 200 response, but dev tools in Chrome show a connection error, in Firefox the request just hangs. No response/HTTP status/error log entry I spent time with support a couple of weeks ago and the tech disabled the ModSec rules that were showing up in error.log. It looked like it solved the issue, but a week later a client of mine that contacted me with this issue said it was still broken. The server was rejecting uploads over ~120kb and not logging any errors. This time support just disabled ModSec entirely- we didn't even know where to start without logged errors. You might want to check your upload file sizes during this process. I've been with DH almost 10 years and this didn't used to happen (maybe started when pushing DreamPress? just a guess). Being unable to handle this myself even though I'm on a private VPS (albeit managed) is frustrating. I'm confident in PW security, and I have a significant amount of .htaccess rules to block suspicious activity, but shutting ModSec off entirely isn't cool- especially when their admin, documentation, and support team (correctly) recommend strongly that you shouldn't. At this point I'm considering spinning up a VPS at DigitalOcean. I only used managed hosting because it was supposed to "just work", but I've had better experiences with well-configured unmanaged VPS', which have other perks to boot. C'est la vie.

Great share. I thought I searched hard enough... but apparently not. Looks like some really bad decisions all over again. They removed all of the ModSecurity issues but now the admin just hangs and never gets a response from the server. I was able to upload an image, but the client re-contacted me and said there's another issue with images again so I'm back to looking into it again.

Hello all, Sharing some issues that I've had with Dreamhost that I've seen over the last week for ProcessWire sites. This doesn't seem to be caused by ProcessWire itself or it's code. Wanted to let others know in case anyone has sites currently hosted with them. I have several sites on a VPS through Dreamhost (both PW and non-PW). I've been overall happy and have had very few problems over the ~10 years I've used them. Their support team has been great and they are currently working on the issues. Recently it appears that some server config changes made by their admins broke image uploads within ProcessWire. Uploads fail with the UI continually showing the upload spin animation over the image. I initially contacted support regarding one of my client's sites after they told me they were having issues. I then tested this on a different ProcessWire site hosted on the same VPS to check that this wasn't a code issue specific to that one site and it appears that this may affect multiple ProcessWire sites (maybe just on my VPS, not sure yet). The server would return HTTP 418 (cute) and the upload would fail. All other functionality appears to be unaffected. After testing the second site I thought to throw it out here on the forums to see if anyone else hosts PW sites on Dreamhost and have been experiencing this, or give a heads up to people who may want to check on their sites.

...I thought I knew what love felt like...

I want to give a shoutout to the work that @bernhard is doing with his page builder- and all his modules really. He took the time to share the progress he's made on RockPageBuilder. It really does nullify so many issues that I shared above in my 9 WP examples above. Once again, the quality coming out of the PW community continues to take things that exist on other platforms and do them the right way, just like PW itself. Outstanding work! It's a module, so I'm going to count this as PHP related ?

These videos are fantastic. Very enjoyable and always make me excited for the new things we have to work with!

At the request of @kongondo, I threw together a dive into my business approach. It's long because I talk too much, but maybe someone will find it useful! The Business of Web Development

I posted a (rather lengthy) comment about some of the ways I work with my clients. I'll be posting some of that here where reading it in context can help the message as a whole. I've been a web designer/developer for ~15 years in many capacities like freelancing, in-house employee, and now at my own one-person company (I'll get into why that's different than freelancing). I've been the new guy on the bottom rung of the ladder, and a director at an ad agency. I don't think that I'm special or that I have it all figured out! I feel this comes from a culmination of experience, long hours, mistakes, and trying my best. I'll group some topics together and give some briefs on each: on being a web professional, building value/client relations, and yeah things don't always go well. Building skills in these areas may help boost performance in things like getting clients on board with ProcessWire, differentiating yourself from other web services, being confident in what you charge, and building both a great reputation and long-term relationships. Get on the bus, we're leaving our comfort zones. Here comes the disclaimer. How and where you work matters. The market you operate in matters, competition, local economy, etc. That's why I'm not going to say "here's how to come up with what you should charge" or "this one neat trick will change the game". These are my experiences, I think some of what I share will be things you can implement yourself, some may inspire you to think of something different, and other stuff might just be rubbish. I also think that knowledge unshared is knowledge lost- so please share your critiques, experiences, and suggestions below. Your opinion and experience matters! Onward! Note- my language will tend to lean towards freelancers and individual operators but if you're a formal employee this all 100% applies to you as well. Take a moment to envision the company you work for as your client. It becomes relevant very quickly. On being a web professional Being a web dev isn't easy. Taking anything you love (going to make an assumption there) and doing it professionally means doing what you like and slapping on a bunch of stuff you don't to make it work. It also means you need to up your game in places that involve things that "orbit" web development. It is always a good idea to break focus and bring in new skills that complement and increase your expertise. This is necessary so you can be more than a really good developer- you can become an expert. An expert professional proactively learns as much as possible, they can speak with authority in many areas related to their work through verifiable fact and with consideration for others and their needs. A professional works to be good at what they do but also has skills in multiple areas that allow them to do that. It means the difference between building a website and building an effective website. A professional values: Being a clear communicator. Always #1. Being an educator Being a solution Being a student Some of those seem obvious, so let's unpack 'em. Being a clear communicator means more than speaking well. It means conveying your ideas in a way that others can understand and appreciate. It also means working to understand others because that will affect what you say next. Communication requires translating your technical knowledge into layman's terms and rather than stop at stating a fact or good idea, following up with why. This helps others value things as much as you do and shows respect for others in that you believe that they deserve to know. You are a translator you modify your attitude and approach based on how other people are engaging you by being aware and paying attention. Being an educator means bringing others in on your knowledge. Education helps avoid arguments and shows that other people deserve to know more about what you do. I told a client the other day that there are a lot of people who do technical work that don't take the time to educate those around them, that means what you're doing is just a black box of mystery to them. How can they value what you do if they don't understand it? People have become comfortable with "well I'm not smart enough to do that" or "that's too complex for me", I start with the idea that everyone is capable and it is up to them to find their limits. We aren't teaching them how to program, but we should let other people in on things they might care about. This has to be done in a way that the person you are talking to feels like they are being elevated and not become embarrassed or have feelings that they are ignorant for not knowing something. Example: A client in a meeting started reviewing the mockup and picking it apart. "I don't like the color of that button, and why is it located there? Maybe we should move X above Y. I want the form over here not at the bottom." I addressed each of their concerns. I explained that the button is located there because we know from studying user behavior that it is more likely that people will engage. The color of the button is also a UI strategy, if you look across the entire site you'll see that buttons that do something we want them to do are the same color. The "Menu" button is the same color as the "Sign Up" button, we'll have encouraged interaction by normalizing the experience and by mentally associating that color with action. The background of the call to action form at the bottom of the page is the same color as the button- because it indicates an action that you should take. Being a solution means either providing the solution, or if it isn't possible, brainstorming an alternate option. My least favorite situation is the "yes or no" decision. I try to provide a "yes or yes", where we have two options that can address a concern- even if one isn't as good as the other, or isn't what someone had in mind- you have shown that you are here and ready to work on overcoming a challenge. That makes you and your client a team. A "yes or yes" situation means that you have "become the solution", because that's how people will think about what you bring to the table. This one is worth an example from an experience I just had the other day: The client puts together events and sells tickets online. It's a reasonably large event that means a lot of people buying tickets. A lot of people were buying at the last minute, tickets sell out, and people rushing to buy may need help under pressure, both mean unhappy customers. This means a big influx of customer service requests that are difficult to handle. So: "We are trying to think of a way of how to change the shopping cart system to fix this issue but not sure how." Yes/No - "We could work on that but it may be complex work and will be a challenge to solve the problem by the next ticket date. It's up to you whether that's worth it." Yes/Yes - "Yes it's certainly possible to work on the store, we could also consider having an email sign up form on the website and then send an email when tickets go on sale, then reminders so that it can make it easier on everyone to space out the purchases and prevent last minute pressure. I'm open to both, what do you think?" I worked on a Yes/Yes solution, and they felt a lot better, and they no longer have to worry about it. I also communicated and educated by pairing my suggestion with a clear "why it's a good idea", and then I invited their input after sharing. They're signing a retainer contract with me this week. Being a student seems obvious, but it means being an effective student. We learn how to code better and try new things but it's important to get out of your box. This allows you to be more of an authority on web overall and others will see that as something they can and should trust. It's easy to study what you like, but sometimes you gotta take the classes you don't like to graduate... Here are a few: Get to know how to design websites that work. Learn UI best practices, learn about what parts of web design actually drive conversions things like speed, the number of fields on a form, effective calls to action, the difference between a web developer and a web professional is knowing how to merge what you build with what it has to accomplish. I don't do SEO services, but I have taken a lot of time to study it and understand how my work can be the absolute best when it comes to future performance. It goes beyond semantic HTML. Be familiar with what Google ranks by, the things that matter, and understand what is more important than others. It will affect the structure of the site, it means you will be doing things like creating pages that you probably wouldn't think to. Be good at technicals! Sure you've got a good looking site, but have you truly taken time to study typography? Off the top of your head, do you know what the most effective width of paragraph text on a page leads to more reading by visitors? Do you know an effective length of copy? Learn human/web psychology. How do colors affect perception? What if animations aren't just for making things pretty and cool. etc. Read and study stuff from great people like Mike Monteiro's "Design is a Job" because it will open your eyes a lot to the work you should be doing to support the work you're already doing. Also go watch his video titled "F*ck you, pay me" (spoiler: bad words) Before every project I assume that web design changed and it's up to me to check in on the latest information. Google "web design best practices 2023" before designing, head over to Stitcher.io to check out the latest that PHP has to offer and great tips- using new features may save you time, make your code ready for the future, and keep from using something that will be deprecated (WHY IS MY SITE BROKEN? YOU JUST BUILT IT!). I'm serious. Every single project. I assume my knowledge is out of date in some way. Remember: being honest and saying "you know, I'm not sure but I'll research that and get back to you" or "I'm unfamiliar but that's not something I can't figure out" is a hallmark of a trustworthy professional. Do not be a snake oil salesman, do not lie to get the job, don't be a know-it-all. Learn to defer to others who have more experience than you, for me those are SEO specialists, SEM specialists, and sometimes graphic designers. This shows respect for the work others do and you may get some partners to work with in the future. I have SEO and SEM people I trust and can recommend at the drop of a hat. This also makes you a solution, because you have others ready to help you solve problems. If you get caught BSing your way through something, you won't get away with it. Eventually they'll find out and you won't work with them again. I know people who have dropped off the map because of their arrogance or inability to be humble, you know who gets the phone call for work? Me, not him- and some of the people I work with have known him longer. Building value/client relations If you've made it this far in this ridiculously long post, you'll guess why this section comes after being a web professional. Using communication, education, solutions, and a student are pretty much the only way you can build value. Building value validates your hourly rate, or the price for a project. Those skills create intangible value, "my web person is more expensive, but they're honest, open, and always works with me to get what we need done even when I'm not sure what to do." Be mindful that if you wish you could charge more, consider starting from the basics and build more value. Keep in mind that your clients have a job. They have a business to worry about, they probably need to go pick up their kids from school, payroll is due, and why are sales down this month?! Doing your best to make their experience working with you low stress and relieve them of extra work is invaluable. To build value and establish strong client relations you have to stop thinking like a developer and start thinking like a business- PLOT TWIST: not your business, your client's business. Your work needs to reflect that this is more than a website or web application, it's going to solve problems and be a net gain for their organization. You need to think as if you had an office down the hall, act as if their deadlines matter, through the way you work with clients they should feel like worrying about a website is off the table and they can get back to what their real job is. You know what matters to you? Their profits. What else matters? Their employees effectiveness, their customer satisfaction, etc. Your website/app may highly impact all of those things (and probably will). I had a manager tell me after a presentation for a new product page on a website "I was really impressed, you think like you own a business". Mission accomplished. My response? "I really appreciate the compliment, but it really is a culmination of the work you, me, and the rest of the team have done. I really appreciate you helping move the project forward." Most of the following about initial client meetings and writing a proposal is taken from my other comment so you can skip it if you've read it already. Building value starts from the first time you talk about a website. When we first meet I work to lead the conversation in a way that gets me as much information possible to do the best work I can, to let clients know that I'm here for the "big picture", and to get them to think about what their next website means for them and how much it's worth. In my initial meeting I type a lot of notes and I always discuss the following 7 topics: This may sound odd, but what does your business do? I've looked at your current website, but would like to hear that from you. (There's a chance they haven't updated their current website due to reasons we've talked about here, or that the content doesn't do a good enough job). What are your plans over the coming year? Do you plan on expanding to new locations? New products/services? (Not always, feel the client out to see if they're positioned for this- it also lets you think about whether you need to consider this for the site architecture/code) What do you want visitors to do when they get to your website? What does success look like? Filling a form? Calling? Getting them to your online shop? Visiting your location in-person? Stick around for ad revenue? Explain that websites are supposed to do things with purpose. Open up the conversation about how a website is not a brochure, it's a live business asset that establishes brand strength, is often first impression of a business, and because we just discussed what conversions look like in the previous question- a tool that works 24/7 on their behalf. What do you like about your current site? What don't you like about your current site? Is there something that you want your website to do now that it doesn't now? Get everyone in the room to think about how this isn't a replacement website, we're leveling-up here and it's time to get strategically creative. You'll see that all requires communication, education, solutions, and a being a student. After this, I talk about my values and what is important to me when working with clients. Think about the typical idea that "programmers are hard to work with" or "the IT guy is a jerk and is abrasive". We need to overcome that with new potential clients because it's safe to assume that they've had some not-great experiences. I talk with them about these things that matter most to me: Communication. Always #1. They already know that I've taking the time to communicate, now they know that it's my priority and it makes them realize how much we've been talking about them. This is another thing that I can almost guarantee has not been said to them. Ownership. Businesses/people should own their properties and assets. True ownership means being able to use and update it. If there are services along the way (like maybe Google Tag Manager) or a new hosting company then it should be an account their business owns and I'll guide them through any process to do so. If I were to be unavailable someday- you won't be stuck with a website that was dependent on me. Performance. Re-iterating the need to aim for conversions. Adhering to accessibility rules for legal and user friendliness reasons. Making the site 100% (like Google Lighthouse 100%) SEO ready when it comes time for a specialist to optimize. These questions almost never fail to get potential clients to go wide-open with you. Every single thing we have talked about has now built value and price follows value. This is where we end the first meeting and I tell them that I want to review my notes and put a proposal (I never call it a "quote") together for them and that we can meet/call next. This first meeting usually ends up taking 1-1.5 hours, an initial meeting I had last week took 2. My proposals run 2+ pages. The opening paragraph is the introduction to the project and the approach- if they said they want to expand then the website "will be built with your goals for expansion in mind". The next are bullet points that now re-iterate much of what we talked about in our initial meeting (the 7 questions). Next I talk about timing, to head off "how long will it take"- that this project is a collaboration where we depend on each other to get content, approve designs, consider the features that the website is going to have, etc. We're all in this together, and I am invested in this with them. You're now thinking about their concerns before their questions and you've worked to control that conversation. If I'm asked for more detail, I say that we will set timelines for each stage when we get started- so when design starts the timeline is X, when that is approved we set the next timeline, etc. Then comes the price but I close with the terms of payment. It's usually 40% to get started, 40% on design approval when we go to code, and 20% on launch. Now the client is looking at the price in terms of affordability over the coming X amount of time. Here's what this process has done: my language says "I'm an agency" not "a person who does websites". The client has probably talked to me more than they ever have to other web people. They've shared the good and bad, we have a relationship, and now you have absolutely everything you need to do your best work and they know that. They probably also haven't encountered someone who wants the website to achieve conversions. They now know me as an expert. When you establish relationships with clients consider these items: Don't talk about other clients too much unless you're building rapport and talking about wins before they sign a contract. After that it's like a husband talking to his wife about his girlfriend. You can break this rule if you're talking about a success they've had that you want this client to have and correlate- because you're making it about the client you're talking to. Don't let a client feel like you're too busy or rushed. If an existing or past client needs help with something and it's small- consider what's worth more to you: the money you can bill, or the value of a client relationship. Only consider this if it's small and you can afford it- there is never anything wrong with billing a client. Be selective of who you do this with, don't do it often. Don't create a pattern and expectations. If you do this, be explicitly clear in an email (document it) with something like "I took care of that issue. This on is on the house so we'll skip the bill on this one. Let me know if you need anything else!" Make sure these are small, it makes a client feel like you aren't nickle and diming them. Do not overdo this. Don't do this to win over a bad client. Keep it for your best customers. Yeah, things don't always go well If you're still reading this ridiculously long post... Sh!t happens. You miss a deadline, you got a flat tire, your dog ate your homework. You misconfigured someones DNS and took their site down. Whatever. I would argue that if something goes wrong it's almost always the best opportunity to show how good you are. The only thing that people remember more than a problem is how you handled it. Be honest about it, admit fault, own it. If it was due to an error on someone else's part, I generally try to stay tame on blame and explain what went wrong rather than who did it- unless it was a) something egregious, or b) the person that did web work for them previously. You're not trying to dunk on them (be diplomatic) but you are there to solve problems and making sure they understand why you're now working with them and the other person isn't can be positive. Did a potential client reject your proposal (surely you aren't calling them quotes, right?) Try to negotiate if you're in a position to do it. If you've built value and it really does come down to cost, then look to have the value you've built help in negotiating. Etc. Random stuff I don't send invoices, my billing platform does. Built in document emailing, automated reminders for late clients, time tracking, reporting, expense tracking, customer portals, online payments through Stripe (and others), customizable branding, etc. If you don't have one, check out InvoiceNinja. It's open-source, built on Laravel, has an API, and you know how to put stuff on a web server, right? ? Create a subdomain like billing.yourdomain.com and it's pretty much ready to go. An update email describing less progress on a project than a client may want to hear is better than saying the same thing after they had to ask because they haven't heard from you. Keep communication open and going, let them know that you are thinking about them. Consider offering web hosting to clients when you feel like it's a good fit. Easy and inexpensive, I use StatusCake to monitor all the sites I host so I know if anything goes wrong. So my hosting is "private, exclusively for my clients, and monitored 24/7" Spin up a VPS at a reputable place. For managed hosting I use Dreamhost, for unmanaged Digital Ocean. I have a Dreamhost VPS and a separate managed MySQL DB VPS It's not really an "income source", you don't have to charge much, but it pays for all of my hosting and domain fees (including for my billing platform). They're happy, I'm happy. Very convenient to work on client sites when you don't have to juggle passwords for GoDaddy or some service they've set up. Should you be a company or a freelancer? Up to you. Historically I was a freelancer, then this year I formed an LLC. You don't have to do it but there are benefits Professional image, taxes, a more formal business interaction, legal protections Shows my clients that I'm as serious about what I do for my clients as they are. Consider creating a "marketing deck" Agencies create these to display their services and offerings. They're usually tailored to a specific client, but having a general one to provide people I'm interested in working with is a great professional document. Make it look nice, you don't have to print it, just create a PDF to have and mail. What else can you do? Can you offer more services beyond websites? I provide "web services", so design/build new websites, update/maintain/optimize existing websites Offer building integrations between platforms, provide CRM work where needed if possible Analyze business practices to help optimize workflows Research and provide recommendations for software that solves problems Help manage existing platforms, and train others to use them Think about how a developer gives you the tools for analysis, problem solving, and fast learning. You may learn software faster than other people- I've offered to learn software and then teach it to people who already use it. Think about what you can do that solves a problem while at the same time lowering the bandwidth for employees at a company. This went on waaaaay longer than I thought it would but I just shared whatever came to mind. If you are interested in seeing the deck I put together for my services (and have a reputable account with a history here in the forums) PM me. I don't want to share it in the open since it contains PII. If you found any of this useful, shout out to @kongondo for encouraging me to share. Would love to hear everyone's thoughts, critiques, and suggestions! As always, I am 100% open to being wrong about things that someone else could help me be right about.

This is the de-facto method of increasing our profiles as developers. Wide open communication- especially up front. Set expectations. You can make some pretty safe assumptions that people who have gone through the website process before and have experienced frustration due to lack of communication or transparency. Even just making that statement to protect yourself shows a client that you're engaged. I'm going to take an opportunity to outline my process to fight against this. I'm certainly not trying to say you or anyone else here is doing anything wrong. There are so many factors to take into consideration- including your local market, the businesses available in the area, the number of competitors, etc. I do not advocate for taking what I do as cookie-cutter advice. I'm not going to tout myself as a biz-wiz, but I've learned from freelancing, ad agency work, and being an in-house developer (when I'm in-house, I treat the company I work for as my client) it's about proving to clients that my first concern before fingers-to-keyboard is their business and their success. This is how I go full plan-of-attack against the "1.500€ crowd" because after your first meeting a potential client should be left feeling "whoa- those people who want to sell me a discount website seem like they are a bunch of parcel carriers". My intention is to make every discount chop shop (regardless of CMS) feel like they're slapping out half-assed sites to cash a check- because they are. My first client meeting always covers these points, and never over email. I take notes like a fiend, I want them to know that everything we do next (and the price) is completely dependent on their wants and needs- this is also not a "gimmick", they're giving me my marching orders. This may sound odd, but what does your business do? I've looked at your current website, but would like to hear that from you. (There's a chance they haven't updated their current website due to reasons we've talked about here, or that the content doesn't do a good enough job). What are your plans over the coming year? Do you plan on expanding to new locations? New products/services? (Not always, feel the client out to see if they're positioned for this- it also lets you think about whether you need to consider this for the site architecture/code) What do you want visitors to do when they get to your website? What does success look like? Filling a form? Calling? Getting them to your online shop? Visiting your location in-person? Stick around for ad revenue? Explain that websites are supposed to do things with purpose. Open up the conversation about how a website is not a brochure, it's a live business asset that establishes brand strength, is often first impression of a business, and because we just discussed what conversions look like in the previous question- a tool that works 24/7 on their behalf. What do you like about your current site? What don't you like about your current site? Is there something that you want your website to do now that it doesn't now? Get everyone in the room to think about how this isn't a replacement website, we're leveling-up here and it's time to get strategically creative. Then I talk about the things that are important to me when working with clients. Communication. Always #1. They already know that I've taking the time to communicate, now they know that it's my priority and it makes them realize how much we've been talking about them. This is another thing that I can almost guarantee has not been said to them. Ownership. Businesses/people should own their properties and assets. True ownership means being able to use and update it. If there are services along the way (like maybe Google Tag Manager) or a new hosting company then it should be an account their business owns and I'll guide them through any process to do so. If I were to be unavailable someday- you won't be stuck with a website that was dependent on me. Performance. Re-iterating the need to aim for conversions. Adhering to accessibility rules for legal and user friendliness reasons. Making the site 100% (like Google Lighthouse 100%) SEO ready when it comes time for a specialist to optimize. These questions almost never fail to get potential clients to go wide-open with you. Every single thing we have talked about has now built value and price follows value. This is where we end the first meeting and I tell them that I want to review my notes and put a proposal (I never call it a "quote") together for them and that we can meet/call next. This first meeting usually ends up taking 1-1.5 hours, an initial meeting I had last week took 2. My proposals run 2+ pages. The opening paragraph is the introduction to the project and the approach- if they said they want to expand then the website "will be built with your goals for expansion in mind". The next are bullet points that now re-iterate much of what we talked about in our initial meeting (the 7 questions). Next I talk about timing, to head off "how long will it take"- that this project is a collaboration where we depend on each other to get content, approve designs, consider the features that the website is going to have, etc. We're all in this together, and I am invested in this with them. You're now thinking about their concerns before their questions and you've worked to control that conversation. If I'm asked for more detail, I say that we will set timelines for each stage when we get started- so when design starts the timeline is X, when that is approved we set the next timeline, etc. Then comes the price but I close with the terms of payment. It's usually 40% to get started, 40% on design approval when we go to code, and 20% on launch. Now the client is looking at the price in terms of affordability over the coming X amount of time. Here's what this process has done: my language says "I'm an agency" not "a person who does websites". The client has probably talked to me more than they ever have to other web people. They've shared the good and bad, we have a relationship, and now you have absolutely everything you need to do your best work and they know that. They probably also haven't encountered someone who wants the website to achieve conversions. They now know me as an expert. This has been pretty successful for me over the years. I also have a reputation for engaging and caring about clients- the biggest thing is that people trust me. Right now all of my work is referral/relationship based. I really want to help people out there who struggle with pricing and the "doing business" aspect of the process. If anyone reads this and some of it seemed out of reach- I encourage everyone homework and learn on how to speak to these points confidently. Learn UI best practices, learn about what parts of web design actually drive conversions (things like speed, the number of fields on a form, effective calls to action), if anyone is interested I'd be happy to start another thread and share what I have learned and implemented over 15 years of business-oriented web development via ad agencies, freelancing, in-house developer, and now my own company. Now, go find me a WordPress developer that slaps together a plugin site and remotely does any of this. Time for hard numbers! This is a CRM report of the number of sales leads generated by the website at a former company I worked for (employee). They are now generating the number of sales leads year round as they are in the worst weeks of the year- even worse, the number of leads should have been trending up as the summer months are the strongest sales season. To understand the impact here- the product they sell costs $40,000+ so they are dumping opportunities (and the money that comes with them) back into the market- effectively destroying their revenue. And guess who is a client of mine now... (that's right) a competitor. The leads before that purple line? ProcessWire ? I very much can identify with that sentiment. It's difficult to overcome and not always possible. I went into more detail about my process above because I try to head off so much of what may happen like this- and I don't always win- so I really don't want to pull a "HEY EVERYONE I SOLVED THE PROBLEM!!!" on this haha. I really try to communicate that if I've done my job well then the amount of work they should do shouldn't require that level of customization on their part- BUT you may not be able to win over those that demand it anyway. I can say confidently though that if they want a business driving site, then they should go study UI and UX and become a damn web designer. That's another thing WordPress has done- made people think that web design is easy and made people absolutely ignorant on how their ideas have consequences. From a business point of view, I would be bold enough to say it's outright risky. We all know that good web design is hard, clients should feel the same way- it should make them actually feel uncomfortable doing what page designers let them do. I want them to feel like anything beyond what a RepeaterMatrix field can do may not be a good thing. I want my clients to know that they hired me to do everything in my power as an expert on their behalf. If I walk into a bakery I don't start telling the chef how to bake his bread. My entire approach is not to scare people, it's to educate them. When I show them a web design for approval and someone says "well I don't think the button should be there" or "maybe this should be a different color" we then talk about how xyz actually changes people's behavior, that every component of their site design was placed with intention. My design is intentional, their ideas are opinions. If you feel that your opinions outrank the experience you're hiring me for- there's a $1500 parcel carrier down the street who loves letting you do his job for him. This is why I've never had to show a client more than one design. Sure, there may be tweaks, but by the time we get there we have buy-in from everyone at the table and there's confidence that we've worked together to make the most kick-ass thing possible. I stress the word "collaboration" at all possible points in client relations. I've got my native screenshot tool on Linux ;) I didn't think of a video, good idea! Big thanks for the info @wbmnfktr & @bernhard. This thread has some fantastic stuff going on here. Also I wasn't trying to say that you don't know how to "do web business" but I wanted to share my process out in the open for others to see. So, not a direct critique or aimed at you. I need to check this out to have it in my repertoire. I heard of it but as you can guess didn't make it a priority haha.

So I made a flippant remark about WordPress vs. ProcessWire yesterday, but I'll elaborate here because it's very true. These are just 9 instances where I've helped with WP sites. Different sites, different end clients. All happened within the last 12 months. 1. I have a friend in digital marketing who I contract with sometimes. A client's WP page builder causes her problems with its complexity. Users shouldn't have to worry about things like padding, margin, responsive columns, a visual editor that switches between preview screen sizes, etc. She's asked for my help multiple times because some very front-end CSS properties just have a UI slapped on them but that doesn't make the user a web designer. Felt like using 2005 Dreamweaver in 2023. 2. The same friend manages a different client WP site wanted to create an accordion for content- the markup-esque plug-in text she had to enter wasn't working. So I had to log in and check her code and fixed it for her- there was a symbol that somehow got entered (no idea how, very obscure) that looked like another regular letter or symbol that broke it. She never would have figured it out and not her fault. Not even sure how she would find that off-keyboard symbol. Someone could say "well it was her fault because she screwed up the code", I say why is someone using code-like text in an editor to generate an accordion to begin with? 3. The same friend manages yet another WP site that completely went down due to core and plugin updates- probably the wrong order between the two. I had to log into the host, roll back both the code and the database. It worked until the next day when automated updates just broke it again. They gave up and had another WP site built. Stuck with WP because they "know it" but effectively in practice not really and it's because of the wild variations between plugins and the lottery back-end quality. Also, rolling back to an earlier version just blows the WP vulnerability door wide open, so then you're back to doing emergency dev work on a site that never should have gone down. Since every WP site is different it's now time to enter the "which one of y'all plugins just took this site down?!" jungle. 4. I had a different WP site passed to me by another person I work with where I had to fix a WP plugin and write new code outside of the plugins directory to get it to work. At some point something started blocking execution of some code in the plugins directory. There was no way to fix this without a workaround. Users really don't care how the problem happens or why, and I only saw that their WP site broke. It was for an animal shelter and that plugin listed the animals available for adoption, so again because that's core to the operation of their organization- it's an emergency request. 5. After I had fixed their plugin, the client fires back at me angry because "now we can't update the home page slider!!!". They accused me of breaking it. I think everyone here will agree that modifying a plugin to list animals on interior pages has absolutely nothing to do with a home page slider plugin, or me. I log in and learn how to use this slider plugin where you create it in a completely different location in the admin and then shortcode it into the page. The plugin technically worked but the process was so complex that they forgot how to do it. I went through the process, screenshot the steps, and designed a step-by-step PDF with notes to walk them through the process. This sounds easy but clicking through WP, taking screenshots, photoshopping/writing out instructions, and creating a PDF takes more time than you'd think- but there's no way in hell I could write them an email describing it. I emailed it to them with my invoice. 6. That same person passed yet another problem to me on a different website. Couldn't get the page to update. There was caching involved in two different places, one was in the plugin area of the admin, and another one was in WP bar at the top. Neither of them cleared on page save so the page on the site would just not update. The admin was also really really slow. Editing a page was massive work as plugins loaded and made a ton of AJAX calls just to get parts of the UI visible. You could blame the dev but WordPress has promulgated itself so far into the world and deceptively been marketed as "easy", but it really isn't. 7. My partner is a digital marketing manager for a company, they use a different page builder which after a while got used to using with my help. It was much easier for the dev they hired to push out the website, but a pain to manage. I've had to edit CSS and HTML to fix pages (in the plugin and in the page editor) which is a massive no-no for end clients. What is the value of a CMS that stymies users and my partner only got fixed quickly because I do a webz? 8. Another project with my partner- I don't have the bandwidth to build a site for one of our friends casual softball team, so I created a WP install with a different page builder at their request, then came more problems figuring out why "blocks" weren't working as expected. What I had to do just to get a full width hero image was frustrating. We don't have to go into the other plugin issues. 9. A different WP site had a plugin reg key issue (previous dev may have reused it). This shut down all the forms on their site which were critical, so they decided just to just spend the $30 for a new key. I sat on the phone with this person through the process and they were concerned that if they enter the key the plugin will reset and they'll lose all of their forms. Why should any end user worry about plugins/registration keys and data loss?. I communicated well, and listened to his concerns, everything came out alright. Next day had a meeting with him, the organization president, and a board member want to work with me now. I'm writing a proposal for a very nice monthly retainer contract this weekend and they want to get started next week. Shout out to WP for the boost ? (They have also said that they are in no way married to WP, surprised?) All of these people spent hours before calling me because it can't be that hard, right? WP makes them feel dumb. I billed for each of these and it's part of my income (except my partner...). I'm in a client meeting 2 weeks ago talking about a new site. Someone mentioned WP and before I said anything, 2 people talked about how "every WP site I log into is different and difficult to use". They are currently on a PW site which they've outgrown- but they never felt "this CMS is bad". I adjusted some fields and they're happy. Did it require a dev? Sure did. But they've been using a site that I built back in 2017. I've only really upgraded PW core to keep up with PHP version changes. Not once did a module break. That's when I said in that meeting "I love WordPress, I make a lot of money off of it". Also, none of these websites were fixed by the people that built them. I have a reputation for solving problems and they may be cultivating an image that they create them. I also had a meeting with a bona-fide marketing company to possibly do contract work. I suggested PW and that it doesn't have the problems WP does- the owner of the company said "yeah, but that's something we make money on". Lost an opportunity to do business because profits are baked into the product's problems. So at what point do we acknowledge that there's a difference between saving time in our work and offloading it onto our clients? I use PW to define the client experience. No layout builder, they just enter content and it works and looks like it's supposed to. The sites look nicer longer because non-devs don't design a layout for new pages. We plan ahead for what pages they'll need and occasionally I'll make a "custom template" using a RepeaterMatrix field- but it still ends up fitting the design. Custom sections, no layout builder- 100% satisfaction. The training time to use a PW site is around 15 minutes with "wow, that was a lot easier than I expected". Does it take a little extra dev time on my end? Sure, but I've gotten faster. I have boilerplate Sass that I use to speed things up, and it's easy to reuse blocks of other code between projects. A PW win that I didn't need to split off to a new site or app stack. I used URL hooks to create a basic API on a PW site that my Salesforce Apex components called to sync in-person events for an iPad web app that consultants used to send leads back to Salesforce. That was a faster task thanks to the ProcessWire API, and it let the team and I get strategically creative on how to drive business performance. I credit ProcessWire for having been a revenue driving component. Full stop. $20m -> $70m in 5 years- nonlinear increases, much of that came from pushing the website, digital marketing, and rapid post-launch feature development. The numbers didn't lie. It's also because I designed a website UI optimized for conversions that people who handled content couldn't screw up. All that isn't for every website/client, BUT when I meet with all clients I ask them "what are your business goals and how can your website help achieve them?". I wouldn't have the confidence to ask that with WP. I'm not dragging WP devs or people who choose it, I'm sure there are places where it makes sense. I also recognize devs who take the time to make the experience better regardless of platform (I imagine like @zx80 above). Kudos. It's not just about choosing the right WP plugins or something though. There are non-tangible issues as well, how many people/businesses don't update their site as often as they should because it's difficult? Downtime? Off-hours emergencies? Those are all business strategy and revenue issues. People want to save time and money up front- and please do, they'll eventually pay me and it buys concert tickets and Friday date nights or whatever. Ironically, one of the 9 examples above happened while I was writing this comment. I'm not even lying.

Them: "So what about using WordPress for the website" Me: "WordPress is great, I make a lot of money helping people who own WordPress sites use it."

Thanks to @teppo for the ProcessWire Weekly shoutout! I wanted to share some updates to show I haven't been a lazyass some more detail and information since my last update post. Caching is optional and can be cleared. Translations are persisted for 1 month which helps even out month-to-month API usage, but also expires so if DeepL improves their translation then you still get the latest and greatest. I haven't formally timed it but cached translations feel near instantaneous. Modified content? If the content of a field has changed since the page edit screen was loaded- then the tab text is italicized and an accent is added. This tracks changes whether you typed the text, or if you used the translator to change the content. It's stateful so if you return the content to the original value, the accent is removed to indicate that the content has not changed. Oh, and this is tracked independently for each field, and separately for each language. So it is now much easier to see if there are fields that weren't translated. Heck, it even helps users make sure they didn't miss anything anywhere before they hit Save. Table fields are now supported. I forgot to mention that before. Fluency has been tested with all ProFields and is 100% compatible. TinyMCE is ready to go and, as promised, CKEditor regular and inline are also supported Error handling! Fluency is aware of all errors that are possible to be received back from DeepL. It's also smart enough to know if the DeepL service is unavailable or if you lost connection to ProcessWire (what wifi?). This helps make it very clear where the error happened, which may save you some headaches during development (and maybe emails from your clients/users later). In my case DeepL rejects requests when I'm on a VPN even if my internet is workin' alright. Localization is here. Every single aspect of Fluency is translatable using one central file in the admin language configuration. That's it. No chasing different files in the module to translate things. English is the default language in these pics, but it also shows the proper language if your default isn't. Achtung! Even the errors speak your language. I got you, international friends. For the nerds... One field, one file, full documentation. Each field adheres to standardized public interface methods so they are modular and completely independent of the rest of the codebase. If the old code was structured like this TinyMCE would have been ready the day after it was announced by Ryan. Not every inputfield needs its own module because some fields just use others- a repeater containing a textarea still just counts as a textarea. Less module updates, more translating! All of these are core Fluency features. I'm prioritizing this over any work on a Pro module to get this out for testing and into everyone's hands sooner. Still work to be done, already 3x more code than the last version, but we're bringing the ? More updates to come!

So, I wasn't ripping on JS. I was expressing frustration that I think a lot of people have about the ecosystem. I don't use jQuery but I used it as an example of bloat growth. My point really is the JS-ification of everything and how that mentality has caused a high-intensity recursion of problems stemming from forcing a language written for the browser into a server. I remember when it was first announced that someone was got the V8 engine to run in a server environment and the first thing I thought was "well, that sounds like a box of headaches". The main point was to throw some extra things in about the point that the first video makes: traditional server side programming languages and their frameworks (like Laravel) are not only very capable, they're enjoyable to use. They're also incredibly stable and PHP overall is so much easier to work and upgrade over time. That's not a JavaScript problem, it's not a PHP problem, that's an entire internet problem ha! Angular is a front end framework. It's also a big example of a framework with a rough history of development. Used to introduce a ton of breaking changes regularly and went through a complete rewrite. It wasn't a great developer experience. I was learning it years ago, I watched a presentation by Google where they made a list of all of the breaking changes that would be happening in several months without a major release version. This was after they split it off from AngularJS. I walked away from it. This is a great example of great JavaScript and what a focused UI library can be. I was mainly using React as a punching bag because the video above it was talking about server side components for React. I'm not anti-JS! I mean, yes, but there are a small number of people that have to worry about speed at a scale that it would matter. Tons of applications and websites of all sizes run on "slow" languages and environments like PHP and Ruby, but in the real world the end user isn't going to notice unless something is really really wrong with the code or the server. Where NodeJS is really useful is handling Socket connections. It's really the only choice. I've played around with a tiny SocketIO server I built to it's pretty great. That said, I'm not changing my entire server environment just to implement that. I'm building an application that revolves around timers and control messages between clients and there are services that do this better than managing your own code/server, especially when geolocation is concerned. At that point network latency is a bigger issue. PHP8's JIT compiling will continue to push speed. Is it going to match Node? Nope. Am I worried about it? Nah. Should anyone reading this right now? I'd love to see what you're working on if you are... That was hilarious, but the story behind it also says a lot about the state of package management in JS. NPM was a massive jerk. Yes! I'm using InertiaJS with Laravel and Vue. The reason I chose Vue was pretty much just because it's very commonly paired with Laravel so it's good skill experience. Inertia is really great and simplifies a ton of stuff out of the box. Like I said- having a great server side application and a solid JS front-end is where it's at.