November saw the end of my contract at Signet and the start of a new contract at the Chartered Management Institute (CMI). I have worked with them before and they asked to come back to help them with a new project.
Work
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Last week of November saw me starting a new contract with a company I have previously worked with. This is a first for me in the 4 and a bit years I've been contracting - that I've been asked to return to a company. They had been trying to get me back for a few months, but every time they got in touch, my contract at the time had been extended.
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I'm helping CMI with their new website. They have a custom Wordpress theme and backend being developed by an agency - myself and the in-house junior front-end developer, Harry, will be building components, or modules as they are known in Beaver Builder. We need to get as many done ASAP so that each department can start adding their content.
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It has not been a smooth start, to be honest, I was expecting, based on the tight deadlines, that I'd be jumping straight in and be building components from the get-go, but unfortunately, they didn't even have access to the new website codebase, let alone a local development environment to allow them to run the custom Wordpress theme and be able to build new components. So that was my first task, not being a Wordpress developer, this was a first for me - but I like a challenge. More on this next month.
Freelance
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Started doing some freelance work for the LeManoosh website - they needed a helping hand with some front-end fixes and we'll be working on updates as well soon.
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I also did some work for a day nursery - a new client - they have an existing website that uses Joomla as their CMS. They needed help adding a new page and updating content to reflect their third nursery that opened in September. We ended up having to move the website because it was still being hosted by the original web designer on their personal server and we couldn't get access to the backend.
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Sadly I lost a client this month as well. I can't say much about it right now, I'm not 100% sure why they decided to abandon their existing website, which was designed by someone else and I added a CMS when I came on board, but they have decided to get a new website with a different company.
Articles Read
- How We Auto-Generate Documentation, JavaScript Style
- Back to windows after twenty years
- How to Work Remotely Without Going Insane
- Principles for professional front end development
- Understanding Homebrew by Zell
- Show your leadership skills, even if you're not leading a team
- Every Layout - how it works by Andy Bell
- Every Layout Is Released: Some Facts - HeydonWorks
- 5 Rules for Choosing the Right Words on Button Labels
- Fitness, Freelancing & Motivation by Mike Hince
- My workflow for government design projects by Chris Armstrong
Videos Watched
Style Lists with New CSS — Bullets, Numbers, Markers
Freelance tip: Screencasts A Design System Governance Process