I've been a professional C, Perl, PHP and Python developer.
I'm an ex-sysadmin from the late 20th century.
These days I do more Javascript and CSS and whatnot, and promote UX and accessibility.
Do free work because you want the practice, or because you want something to refer back to, or because you like the client.
Don't do it for exposure.
Borrow a leaf from our designer friends who love to rail against "exposure". They get it worse, because for some reason clients seem to think they're just doodling pretty pictures. Check out clients from hell and you'll get the idea.
I just checked out the clients from hell website. Interesting stories. Where I am from there's been an increase of people making WordPress sites and promising to deliver products in less than two weeks. A lot of people operating the small businesses will opt for them as they charge very cheaply. This has led to quite a large number of them especially the not so tech-savvy to view systems development as easy and you just drag and drop items to create a website. putting developers in the "doodling pictures" stereotype like designers.
I've been a professional C, Perl, PHP and Python developer.
I'm an ex-sysadmin from the late 20th century.
These days I do more Javascript and CSS and whatnot, and promote UX and accessibility.
There's nothing wrong with that example, though. You can knock together a WP site in very little time if you use or lightly modify an off-the-shelf theme.
If that's all the clients need then suggesting something custom is overkill.
Do free work because you want the practice, or because you want something to refer back to, or because you like the client.
Don't do it for exposure.
Borrow a leaf from our designer friends who love to rail against "exposure". They get it worse, because for some reason clients seem to think they're just doodling pretty pictures. Check out clients from hell and you'll get the idea.
I just checked out the clients from hell website. Interesting stories. Where I am from there's been an increase of people making WordPress sites and promising to deliver products in less than two weeks. A lot of people operating the small businesses will opt for them as they charge very cheaply. This has led to quite a large number of them especially the not so tech-savvy to view systems development as easy and you just drag and drop items to create a website. putting developers in the "doodling pictures" stereotype like designers.
There's nothing wrong with that example, though. You can knock together a WP site in very little time if you use or lightly modify an off-the-shelf theme.
If that's all the clients need then suggesting something custom is overkill.
Thanks for the Insight Sinclair. Highly appreciated.