Lately I’ve been doing a lot of unpaid designs. Why unpaid? Obviously my design was not chosen. It’s an open market. It is very subjective when it comes to personal preference of the clients. I hope to score one or two design job soon. Make some money to pay the hosting plan for a start.

It’s not all about money really. I also took it as a challenge to practise my skills everyday.

Here are the designs I’ve accumulated in the past 2 weeks.

If you’re looking for a logo design or you know someone who needs some designing work done, please buzz me at FB.

How do you work with people who wait for you to give them every direction on what to do? How do you expect the designer to work when you don’t even know what you want to put on the site? Do I have to tell you to go look at as many sites as possible to see how they look like and what are the good points you would like to have on your site too?

So what is next?

I go and look at many sites, copied them, make notes so that I can show you. I will point out what are the things that you should have. I spent my nights doing all these after a long day at work. I should be spending more time on the technical part because that is what you cannot do.

What makes a website a website? It’s the content! Do I have to tell you that is the minimal that you must do?

If you don’t work on the content, you might as well don’t revamp your website. End of story.

Currently I’m working on my first project. This is a good learning opportunity as I get to experiment with options and possibilities available.

There are many plugins available on the internet. However, I am focusing more on the fundamentals. A lot of the things can be achieved with technical skills. Plugins are more for people who are not familiar with web designing.

I try to avoid using that in designing the core because these plugins are written by third parties. Over the years WordPress had evolved with many versions. Some plugins may not work after an upgrade. However, plugins for enhancement are good to have.

I did not know much about WordPress blogging 2 weeks ago. I still do not know a lot about WordPress. So I will be spending some time to play around with more widgets and plug-ins in the coming weeks.

Previously I was using Blogger which is free. Anyone with a Gmail account can start blogging using Blogger. At one point I tried my hands on free WordPress but found it too restrictive.

So after some serious thoughts, I finally signed up with Bluehost. I did my research by checking other blogs and comments by bloggers. I found Bluehost to be user friendly and affordable.

The hardest part in setting up a blog is to choose a domain name. Over the years, a lot of names had been taken up. It is really up to one’s creativity to come up with a name. Many people choose to use their own names. However, I don’t quite like the idea that people can find me easily on the internet to read about my personal life.

It took me about 2 weeks to research for a domain name. Thanks to darling Greg. I got the inspiration from him. I foresee more difficulties in this area when I am to setup blogs for money-making purposes. (Yes, this is part of my plan.)

Next, I had to choose a theme (design). There are many free WordPress themes available online. You just need to download it and place it on the server. With Bluehost, this has become so easy.

Since I am a web design person, naturally I tweaked the free theme. Added in some graphics, changed some colours, edited the header, added in keywords and description (for SEO purposes) and changed some links.

However, do note that most free themes requires users to keep the footer intact. Therefore, I did not remove any links to the original designer of the theme at the bottom of the page.

Last night I paid for the hosting. Today I uploaded the theme. Now, I am blogging.