Looking for experience

Garlic Suplmnt

Hi, I'm a website manager for a large organisation. Our website receives well over a million visits each year. I manage a content authoring and editing team of about 50 individuals within our organisation.

The website itself is a bespoke solution I inherited when I assumed my current role, so I've not had much involvement with the creative or technical task of actually creating it.

The main technical aspect of my role is primarily ensuring the smooth running of our website, for which hosting, tech support and CMS provision is looked after by a third party vendor.

My job frequently requires me to stick my head under the bonnet to get to the bottom of a whole host of technical issues, especially where I just don't have the time to wait for a solution to pop out of the end of a support queue.

In addition to the growing knowledge-base I'm gaining in work, I'm also nearing completion of a web development Diploma at IACT. The course has been an excellent primer in CSS, as well as a great opportunity to expand on my HTML, SEO and Adobe CS. I'll be commencing the follow-on diploma in the new year which will be dealing exclusively with back end development (servers, JavaScript, PHP, SQL etc).

So, what I'm looking for is a client with a need for a small to medium scale website. I would be willing to develop this for you for FREE. I am looking for the experience of working with a client, project-managing and developing a website from scratch. I'm also very interested in seeing first hand how the whole handover experience works in reality (e.g. providing the CMS, transferring hosting etc).

As an alternative, I would also be interested in working for a developer (again for FREE) with the view to gaining some real world experience in the entire gamut of website development.

Needless to say, the goal of this is to ultimately become a professional freelance web-developer, to supplement my 'day job'. I believe some good, solid experience of any relevant variety, coupled with my experience to date, will see me nicely on my way!

If you're interested, PM me and we can take it from there. Thanks for reading!

KonFusion

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Moved from Work Wanted thread

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Garlic Suplmnt wrote: »

I would be willing to develop this for you for FREE. I am looking for the experience of working with a client, project-managing and developing a website from scratch. I'm also very interested in seeing first hand how the whole handover experience works in reality (e.g. providing the CMS, transferring hosting etc).

IMO (and I'm sure others share it) this (working for free) is a terrible idea.

If what you wish to gain is experience, and ultimately an understanding of a projects lifecycle and processes thereof, you will not learn this on-the-fly from one project. And indeed anything you do learn may have false value, and only damage your future projects.

Find a freelancer/dev/project manager/small web agency-type, take them for coffee, pick their brain, ask if you could intern for a few days etc. Read blogs. Email people for advice. This will yield far better results.

tramoreman

you might be better designing a few speculative websites to get practice have seen on linkdin one of the suggestions is to design speculative sites or design sites for family or friends or local businesses

Garlic Suplmnt

tramoreman wrote: »

you might be better designing a few speculative websites to get practice have seen on linkdin one of the suggestions is to design speculative sites or design sites for family or friends or local businesses

Thanks for the advice, I've actually just finished my first website for a friend's business! It's pretty bog-standard, but it's a start!

smash

Garlic Suplmnt wrote: »

I'm also nearing completion of a web development Diploma at IACT. The course has been an excellent primer in CSS, as well as a great opportunity to expand on my HTML, SEO and Adobe CS. I'll be commencing the follow-on diploma in the new year which will be dealing exclusively with back end development (servers, JavaScript, PHP, SQL etc).

As they saying goes "Jack of all trades, master of none". Don't do this to yourself OP because you'll make yourself unemployable. Pick a side, front end or back end and go for it!

KonFusion

smash wrote: »

As they saying goes "Jack of all trades, master of none". Don't do this to yourself OP because you'll make yourself unemployable. Pick a side, front end or back end and go for it!

I agree, specialising in one area is good (certainly early on in one's career), however a solid grounding in both is good to have.

Garlic Suplmnt

thanks folks!

p

KonFusion wrote: »

IMO (and I'm sure others share it) this (working for free) is a terrible idea.

It depends. I gained tons of experience doing things for free.

Usually it was for things like charities, clubs etc... though, so I didn't mind it being free.

It was invaluable in understanding the process and building up a portfolio.