Abel Mohler

I’ve built several sites that have blogs built as a section of the site.  Giving a site a blog these days is only par-for-the-course.  With WordPress of course, this task is extremely easy, making it match the rest of your site is a simple matter in the right hands.  I wonder though how much of this is a wasted effort?

Let’s say you have a “normal” home page, with an introductory paragraph, heading, title, etc, telling you what the site is about. This content doesn’t change much, though you may adjust it from time to time to refine your message and make it clearer to your users. Read More…

Because I live in a Western country, the United States, and work online in a global marketplace, Odesk, it has always concerned me that I should be able to compete against sources of labor that try to undercut the marketplace with outrageously low prices. This was such a concern for me, that at the beginning of my current career path, it almost stopped me from becoming a full-time freelancer, because of how discouraging the marketplace appeared to be.

There are many voices in the Odesk community, some louder than others, that constantly complain about how low the rates are.  Most of these complaints come from those living in the West who are trying to enter the market as virtual assistants and data-entry providers.  Some of these people actually end up working for less than five dollars per hour because they are so badly in need of work.  Needless to say, this is not a sustainable living wage in the US. Read More…

I’ve had an interesting if not exactly enjoyable time transferring a popular site onto a new host.  If you have ever changed hosts, you know it can be a sometimes frustrating and patience-consuming task.  This is especially true when the site has been built over many years of time.

Upon completing the move, we soon learned that there were many more 404 errors than there should have been.  Read More…

In January 2008, I had very little experience building websites or doing any other development.  I had just lost the job I had spent all summer studying to get, and had very few prospects for other work.  In desperation, I applied for a job at Best Buy as a member of the Geek Squad.  I really don’t have very much computer repair experience, and in retrospect, I’m glad I was turned down.

I am currently very glad to be one of the fortunate few that does something that he really enjoys.  I am a full time, freelance web developer.  Unlike many people who run a business from home, I spend very little time looking for prospects, writing proposals,  or making calls.  I never write invoices.  None of my clients are local.  The market I work in is global.  I have one employee: myself.
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After some time contributing to forums, I’ve decided to start a blog.  I’ve realized that it would be more productive creating content for my own site, rather than spend an exorbitant amount of time creating content for other sites.  I’ll still be caught on occasion in other communities, but this is where I’d like to put my most important thoughts.
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