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I'm a 17 year old web developer. What is wrong with my site?

1 points by milesokeefe ↗ HN
I'm looking to improve my website to help in my job search.

Any tips, improvements, errors, etc would be greatly appreciated.

http://milesokeefe.com/

7 comments

[ 0.21 ms ] story [ 28.2 ms ] thread
petersouth
-Your Family Tree project link doesn't work -Maybe in your accolades section the awards can link to a better description or place where I can find out what they mean. The short description doesn't enlighten enough. -You say you've shipped a ton of projects, but only had a few listed. Maybe have a link to see more of your projects other than the highlighted ones -The layout and graphics are very nice though! -Rate your competency in each programming skill (Maybe look at the website Elance.com for more suggestions, or even put up a profile there under the individual section. That is where I hired my last website developer) -Maybe you could put prices. I pretty much instantly move on to the next company/person if I don't see listed hourly/project rates. Also put a section about how you get paid and if you pay before, or at certain times, or at the end. This one guy had a 100% money back guarantee if I didn't like the work. I picked him over the hundred others I saw. Also he was willing to look at my code over filezilla first-nobody else was willing to give estimates so that would give you a leg up too! -Instead of email me link just put the email address so someone can copy and paste. It tried to go to outlook and I haven't used that for decades.
kijin
The first half is good advice, but most of the second half is not. It's written completely from the point of view of the client, and a client's interests aren't always in line with yours. Sometimes you'll be desperate to get every single client, but sometimes you want to stay away from potential clients who "instantly move on" just because they don't like something on your homepage.

If I were you, I wouldn't publish my prices online, not even as a starting point for negotiations. If you publish an hourly rate, clients will treat it as an all-inclusive absolute ceiling. If you publish a per-project rate, clients will try to persuade you that their highly customized online store is the same as their neighbor's cheap blog. In either case, the initial convenience that you offered to potential clients will return to haunt you in the wallet for for weeks to come.

The only exception would be for kinds of work that are extremely predictable, like setting up a WordPress blog with basic Facebook/Twitter integration and $XX per additional page. Basically, if you could write a script to automate it and just plug in a design, it's safe to publish a quote. But anything that requires more than dozen lines of custom programming has the potential to cost you countless hours for no additional pay.

> 100% money back guarantee if I didn't like the work

Nope. No money should ever go back from you to the client. If you really want to give your clients assurance that you won't rip them off, set up a few milestones where you agree to present specific parts of the deliverable. If the client likes it, bill them for the next portion of the project. If the client doesn't like it and you can't fix it without significant overtime, terminate the contract right there, the client keeps whatever design/code they paid you to produce so far (even if they think it's shitty), but any money they paid you is nonrefundable. That way, the client only takes a small risk at a time.

> he was willing to look at my code over filezilla first

That would be nice, but you have to word it carefully. Offer to do "free consultations" up to a point, so that you can get a better idea about the scope of the project. But don't do any serious design/programming until the down payment is in your bank.

> Instead of email me link just put the email address so someone can copy and paste.

That's actually good advice. Even better, put up a contact form named "Request free consultation," "Request quote," or similar. (Do this in addition to posting the email address.) Add some sliders or checkboxes if you want to provide estimates for predictable tasks, as mentioned above, though I stand by my opinion that this is a risky thing to do. A contact form is also a nice opportunity to learn how to send emails reliably from a website (no more mail() nonsense), and how to keep all those pesky spammers away from your contact form without hindering usability.

sjy
The background image is around 1.4MB and took so long to load that I began to wonder if something was wrong. (I'm in Australia; maybe this isn't such a problem if your clients are all local.)
DanBC
Have a look at the audits in Chrome. Read, learn, and understand what the Chrome messages are telling you and decide if you want to tweak anything on your page.

Did you run it through any validators?

You have 7 languages in your list. That's quite a lot, especially for a 17 year old. Which are your strongest? Do you have examples of your code for those?

kijin
Hi Miles,

First things first: I don't think HN is the right place to solicit comments on personal website designs, despite the fact that it happens from time to time. So don't be disappointed you don't get a lot of comments. (Edit: it looks like you did get a few good comments. Lucky you!)

Anyway, back to the website.

1. Go to validator.w3.org. Paste your domain into the Address box. Fix all the errors that show up in the result page. Especially those duplicate IDs.

2. Check your website in a phone. If you don't have access to a smartphone, download Opera Mobile Emulator. On my phone, everything except your name is zoomed out so much that it's barely readable. Time to write some CSS media queries!

3. A single-page website that scrolls itself is cool. (Personally, I'm not a big fan of this trend, but other people seem to like it.) Stock photo background, not so cool. Your name in white text, against a relatively bright background, also uncool. Also see 9) below.

4. Do you really need to remind me of the name of each of your projects as I hover the mouse over them? Five of them already have the name (or part of it) in the screenshot. A short description might be more informative.

5. Your age can be both an asset and a liability. It's an asset because it shows that you're smarter than the rest of the 17-year-olds. It's also a liability because potential clients might underestimate your seriousness, your reliability, and/or your ability to charge a fair hourly rate. You're almost 18. Your days of relying on your competence/age ratio to distinguish yourself from others are all but over. From now on, it doesn't matter how old you are. Focus on looking professional. Very professional.

6. phpMyAdmin is not a paradigm. In fact, I would say that only 2 of the 7 items on your list qualify as paradigms. There are also duplicates, like LAMP = Apache + MySQL + PHP. Consider a different way to organize and present your skill set, and try to quantify your skills as others have suggested. Also, be honest in your quantification. You don't have to be an expert in everything.

7. Instead of just MVC, list any frameworks you've used (if any). A lot of companies are looking for people who are familiar with CodeIgniter, CakePHP, etc. It's OK if your favorite framework doesn't coincide with theirs, because most frameworks are similar.

8. Microsoft likes to use big slabs of solid color, but it quickly begins to look like a website from the 90s if you overdo it. Making your slabs slightly transparent doesn't make them look any better, either. Subtle patterns (google this exact phrase for a nice website with lots of free textures), light gradients, and shadows can go a long way toward making your designs less monotonic. Just don't overdo it. Don't overdo anything.

9. Reconsider your choice of fonts. Heading in a generic-looking sans-serif web font, with subheading in Arial, another generic-looking sans-serif font? Nope, looks amateurish. Read up on typography best practices.

10. You have a GitHub profile! Why don't you link to it? (On the other hand, you might not want people to judge you based on the quality of your open-source repositories, especially if they were updated quite a while ago. If I were a client, I wouldn't want to catch a potential hire using the mysql_query() function with interpolated variables.)

If you have any questions about what I wrote above, feel free to ask.

sirtel
It would be better if there is no background images. There could be a line go through the webpage. By line, I mean a theme which connect each parts together, to make it consistent. Do not just show your skills, but use your skills to do something cool and meaningful.