Often times we find ourselves trapped by a clients’ deadline, especially when a certain project needs to be done yesterday. This might lead to skipping the most important questions to ask clients and getting straight to the work, which can be problematic later. You know what I’m talking about, the “Oh, well we also needed…” or “That’s not exactly what we had in mind…”. Here I have compiled a list of questions to ask your clients for a better project proposal and a design brief.

The more information you know about a project and about the client, the better results you will produce and less time will be wasted, especially when building websites and other things with a larger project scope.

Certain types of functionality you might need to contract out or spend more time on than other parts, whereas logo design more or less has the same process, and has had the same process for many years and is straightforward. Here are some questions that I ask my clients and some other questions I found that may be useful to you.

I don’t ask all these questions, but many below I do cherry pick to ask new prospective clients:

General Company Info

• What is the name of your company and why? (Sometimes this question has an interesting backstory that might help you write a creative brief)
• How or why did you start the company?
• What is the nature of your business?
• How long have you been in business?
• What is the size of your company? (This question can tip you off on general revenue and potential size of their budget if they didn’t disclose it)
• Who are the main contacts and who will have final approval of the project? (For obvious logistic purposes)
• Are there specific dates the project needs to be completed? (Generally this is stated upfront but sometimes it isn’t. Best to overcommunicate everything)
• Your budget dictates how much time can be spent on your project. Do you have a budget for this project or an annual budget for marketing? (Marketing is generally where our services fall under)
• Describe your business in one sentence.
• Describe your business in two words?
• Describe your business in one word? (These two and one-word questions can give you an idea of what kind of style the decision makers have. They might respond with “epic” or “excellence”.)
• What doesn’t your business do, or do well? (This might be an opportunity for you to offer your expertise if it’s marketing related.)
• What differentiates your business from competitors? (You’ll cover competitors a bit later, but you’ll want to know what is their unique value proposition)

General Image of the Company

• If your company/brand was a person or figure who would it be? Why? For example, you might see your company as James Bond, but your customers see Mr. Rodgers.
• If your company/brand was an animal which one would it be? Why? (This could be good for visuals and also might set the pace of what the brand image should be)
• Is there an important object, building or person for your business? Such as a mascot or icon?
• What is the normal dress code at work? (Pertains to general office culture. I’ve seen shops that I would assume would be casual require all but 3-piece suits.)
• How do you want the public to perceive your image? (Sometimes they’ll say “To be the best [insert service here]” but try to get a little more specific than “the best”)
• What do you want to be remembered for? (Might be morbid, but you want to get them thinking about GROWTH)
• What words should the general public associate your business with? Name at least 3.
• What aspect of your image needs improvement? How do you want your image to be seen next year? or in 10 years?

Competitors

This discussion will help you understand your clients’ industry better if it’s something obscure.

• Who are your competitors that are relevant?
• How are they better/worse than your product/service? (Time for honesty here. DO they have better competitors? And why?)
• Who might you compete with in the future? (This opens the conversation for potential future services or new features in the product)

The Target Audience

This conversation is probably the most important. You are marketing and designing for their customer, not your client personally.

• Who is your customer? Describe in detail.
  (If they need guidance, give an example of one of your own customers so they can start to paint the same picture. For example: “My client, Ben, comes to our coffee shop every day, he is in his mid-twenties and rather boisterous. He dresses very casually, flip-flops, t-shirt, and shorts. Usually American Eagle or Hurley attire. Sometimes he rides his bicycle to the shop, but other times he’s seen in his beater vehicle. He’s mentioned watching some popular titles on Netflix.)
• Who is the ideal customer?
  (This might be very different from your client’s current customer. It might be, “I wish Barbara was a customer. She is in her early 30’s, is a stay at home mom, wears designer brands and drives a white Lexus. She’s married and sometimes comes in with the family on Saturday’s. She doesn’t spend her time watching TV, instead she volunteers at the local YMCA.” Whatever helps paint the picture!)
• What customers do you want to attract that you aren’t getting yet? (This is more of an affirmation of the above, so can be paraphrased in the meeting as “So you’d rather see more people with higher incomes and interests in [whatever that might be]?”)
• How do your customers find out about you? (Where do their leads come from? What’s their primary source? If they don’t know this information, they need to get on this STAT)
• What do they want from your business? What is the main selling point for them?
• What customers do you not want to attract?

Current Identity and Logo Mark

• Do you have a logo mark?
• What do you like about it and what do you not like about it?

Building a Website Specific Questions

• Why do you need a new website or a redesign? (This is an opportunity to spark the discussion on why their current website is not working for them or their customers)
• List the business objectives of your website. (This might be “We need to increase traffic by 30% and increase leads by 15%”, but ultimately, make sure it’s not “We need to look better. Push your client and yourself to have tangible goals.)
• What aspects of your current site work well and why are they successful?
• What aspects of your current site are unsuccessful and why do you think that is? (This might not be the site itself, but a particular internal process they might have that needs improving)
• What will people want to do on the site? (Some sites are informational, while many you take actions on. What will it be for your client?)
• List websites you like the aesthetics of and explain why.
• Outline any ideas you may have for the site. How would these features support your business goals and the goals of your customers?

Anything else?

Don’t forget to make sure to ask the client if there is anything that was left out that they would like to add to the brief. A lot of these questions can be condensed into single questions, and some are more useful than others. But remember one thing: The more information you have on the project and the client, the better experience it will be for both parties. Ultimately you are there to help them and their customers succeed, so be as helpful as possible by collecting as much data on your client as you can.

The post Questions To Ask Your Clients For a Better Proposal and Design Brief appeared first on Alison Foxall.

Solution: Within a few clicks, you’ll have secured your URLs in a few minutes, with what normally is a process that would take at least an hour+ if you had to do this manually.

SSL installation history

Installing SSL certificates on web servers is the bane of my existence. I can’t stand the task, mostly because I hate being in command line (CLI), moving to various folders, uploading files using rsync or other methods. And once you got everything right, you needed to restart apache and be on your way. I actually still do this for a few websites If you don’t know anything about linux server management, that process isn’t for you. But the good news is, companies like WP Engine have automated this process with a service called Let’s Encrypt, which offers free SSL certificates.

Installing an SSL certificate with WordPress and WP Engine

First, on your install on the WP Engine Dashboard (not the WordPress dashboard), go to the SSL link and click the “Add Certificates” button.

Second, click the “Get FREE Certificates” on the next screen.

Why purchase an SSL certificate vs getting a free one?

You might be wondering why in the world would you pay for one if there is one for free. There are a variety of options that might be better suited for other companies. For your needs, it’s probably best you get the basic free certificate rather than a paid one.

A wildcard certificate covers multiple subdomains. For example, if you have various sites like cats.mydomain.com and dogs.mydomain.com, these are technically two domains that need to be secured with separate certificates. A wildcard SSL certificate will handle all subdomains on your main domain.

You also might need an SSL certificate that also confirms your identity. These certificates will need more documentation on your end that you are you. They’ll ask for forms of government identification for your or your company.

  vs  

The point of it is to have your company name where “Secure” normally would be in most browsers, like above.

At last!

Finally, on the last step, check your domain off, agree to the terms and conditions, and click the big button that says “Request SSL Certificate“.

Once your certificate is done pending, make sure you actually secure your URLs with the settings below:

Conclusion

Once you save all changes, you’ll be up and running with SSL in no time. This process literally takes about 2 minutes. If you were logged into WordPress, after it’s implemented, your session will end and it will ask you to log in again. Be sure to make sure you change your blog address in settings to https rather than HTTP. As always, if you have questions, get WP Engine on the support line. They are the best!

I cannot recommend WP Engine enough! Things like this make all of our lives easier.

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The issue is not that you don’t know what to do to be successful, the issue is, you don’t do it.

As I was browsing YouTube today, a video caught my eye about how to get leaner (leaner body). Backstory: I’ve been on a fitness/lifestyle change and so my feeds are generally filled with fitness related stuff. Most of my child, adolescent, and young adult life I’ve been thin. A few years ago “something happened” and I “ballooned” up to be overweight, about 150 pounds on my 5’4″ frame.

I was away from home for about a month last year traveling, and when I came home and weighed myself, I had gained about 12 pounds, reaching 150, and was at 34% body fat. At borderline 34% body fat (which is considered obese on most charts), I was completely shocked and knew a change was in some serious order.

I had tried to lose weight 8 months prior and had ended up gaining weight while vigorously working out. Discouraged, I stopped working out and continued the same-ol’ same-ol’.

Determination set in

In January upon returning home, I put my foot down and was determined to figure out this whole “lost weight” thing. I had never had success with it prior, and it was scary thinking that perhaps I was destined to be overweight like the majority of America. For two weeks I strength trained and ate at my “calorie goal”. I didn’t see a reduction in weight, but I did see a half a percentage of body fat loss. That was mildly encouraging, but it wasn’t nearly enough as I had anticipated.

I started aggressively hitting my protein macro and ensuring that goal was met every single day. Subsequently, my carbohydrate macro went way down, to the point where I wasn’t eating many carbs. Turns out that was the best thing I discovered about eating and diets. I discovered the ketogenic diet / way of eating a week later. In the first two weeks of doing keto (or what some call low carb high fat), I dropped 9 pounds, and a percentage of body fat. I assume a lot of that ended up being water.

From there on out, I committed to eating keto, and over the next 3 months, I dropped another 11 pounds. I’ve gotten lazy and comfortable from May to now, still mostly eating within my macros, but I’ve recommitted recently and lost another 3 pounds. I’m currently my thinnest I can remember in a very long time. Years. Not nearly at where I was about circa 2008 when I was arguably in the best shape of my life (eating the worst stuff though)– but where I’m at now is leap years where I was 6 months ago, or even 4 years ago.

I finally figured out the best way of eating for my body. The only thing holding me back now is me.

Deliberate practice

This video was really not about fitness. It was about modern psychology, how you see yourself, your habits and deliberate practice. The things we do that become subconscious, freeing up our mind to do conscious things, is only done by deliberate practice. Getting really good at something is possible by practicing. But not just any practice, deliberate practice. In the book Talent is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else, what it really means to practice deliberately is discussed at length, and many examples are given of humans practicing something for hours– but not just any practice. They’ll deliberately practice the parts that they’re terrible at or situations where they don’t have much experience in. For example, a golfer may practice for hours in the sand trap so that when they are faced with that situation, they’ve had plenty of practice to handle it.

In this video, listen to what several famous people had to say. Jim Carrey wrote himself a check for 10 million dollars and kept it in his wallet as a “goal card”. A few years later he landed a gig for 10 million– the lead role in the movie Dumb & Dumber. Arnold Schwarzenegger mentions that going to the gym every day was beyond discipline. He didn’t need discipline any longer. His self-image was pulling him there because he had a vision of himself.

So now what? Practice?

Yes. Whatever it is you are aspiring to be, outline the steps to get there and do it. Every day. If it’s fitness then do it every day. Repeat in your mind what you aspire to be and surround yourself with mentors that will help you achieve your goals. You don’t have to personally know your mentor either. I follow Neil Patel, Pat Flynn, and Marie Forleo on the web because I aspire to be like them as marketers. I follow Ross Draws because I aspire to be like him as an artist, and I follow various fitness experts online that I aspire to look like.

One caveat: don’t focus on all the things

A problem I run into is I want to transform my entire life all at once. While possible, it is easier to focus on one goal and work towards that by changing your habits little by little. I find that fitness is an easy way to practice discipline, which is literally practicing practice. Once you get the habits down, it becomes a part of you, just like Arnold said. Then focus on the next habit. Maybe it’s meditating, maybe it’s working on your side project daily, perhaps it’s writing your book. Whatever it is, focus on that one thing and keep doing it.

The post Deliberate Practice is the path to personal success appeared first on Alison Foxall.

While the work section is coming along on this new site, as well as a renewed interest in writing and keeping up with my thoughts, I also migrated this site from Liquid Web to WP Engine. It’s been time to say goodbye to Liquid Web for quite a while now. Tomorrow I’ll be grabbing the last vestiges of the server and closing the account.

LW served us well in the beginning days of Gobble Logic, but even though we were paying $60 a month for a managed server– it wasn’t being managed. WP Engine has been the best web host I have ever had the pleasure of doing business with. I’m happy to recommend them to any one of my clients. Many are using it now.

All in all, I’m presently happy with the theme. It’s a Genesis theme called Workstation Pro. It suits my needs for now while I build my custom WordPress theme with my own flare.

I’m still adding in-depth descriptions for each portfolio piece, but let me know what you think all in all. I also updated my biography for 2016!

The post New Alison Foxall Website appeared first on Alison Foxall.

[php]add_filter(‘widget_text’, ‘do_shortcode’);[/php]

Additionally, if you’d like to render a shortcode in a theme file, use the do_shortcode function. Generall, this is not recommended because it’s not editable by the end user easily.

[php]echo do_shortcode(‘[shortcode_name]’);[/php]

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When I was 13 or so I turned our family computer into a web host. At the time, I was unable to go through traditional means of securing a web host since I was a minor and had no credit card to put on file. None of the hosting companies had a “pay by mail” option. HA! I read up on what I needed to do, and before you knew it I had the Windows XP turned into a powerhost! I was also too young to purchase a domain. I ended up obtaining several free subdomains. TLD’s (top level domain) were again, only paid by bank card, and I didn’t have that tool in my financial arsenal yet. It wouldn’t be until I was 16 that I opened up a checking account.

My first experience as my own host was complete naivety. I had in the back of my head that I was probably exposing our family computer to hackers. I didn’t do anything special to the setup. Thankfully there was nothing sensitive on it (at least I didn’t think so!). I hosted the array of sites that I maintained which were mostly sites of hobbies I did or things I liked or was a fan of. I enjoyed creating graphics, making tutorials, and posting them online. I used our computer to host all of this.

The amazing host that I created out of the family computer quickly died at night though. My Dad had a habit of unplugging the DSL modem in the evening and taking it with him to bed to prevent me from staying up late and doing the following:

1. playing multiplayer games: command and conquer!
2. lurking and partaking in forum discussions
3. evil chat rooms?!
4. working on my latest “web design”

Fast forward three years and I’m working a job, have a checking account, etc. I signed up for some host (who I don’t recall the name) in Europe that was way cheap. This was when they counted bandwidth and put caps on your traffic. It all seemed very…limited. But it was affordable for me and my $6.00/hr job at Panera Bread. I jumped jobs 2 months later to work at 7-Eleven at $8.00/hour. Wahoo, big raise for me in those days. If you’re wondering, yes, I was robbed– multiple times.

Finally in 2006, my senior year of high school, I made the “jump” to Media Temple. All the cool kids were using MT! All the design people recommended them, and I wanted to be in the “in” crowd, you know? It wasn’t too much more expensive than my European host, so I signed up. All was well for many years… I went through an upgrade somewhere in the middle.

Not long after I graduated high school, probably 8 months later, I landed my first web design position in the real working world, thanks to my roommate, Derek. Since the start of my career I had always recommended Media Temple hosting: reliable, safe, easy to use and reputable. In 2010, service seemed to be below par. Maintenance seemed to be prevalent, more so than usual, and in 2011, there were several outages during the days that I could no longer safely tell prospective and current clients that Media Temple was a good choice for their business. I had lost trust in them. In the beginning of 2012 it was more or less the same, with minor improvement.

In once instance, I had a client who was on a dedicated virtual server and it was snail slow. There wasn’t anything running on it, no processes at all, and it was the big mystery of all time to me. I had lost so much trust in them, that in 2012 when I started Gobble Logic with my partner Matt Wild, we went with Liquid Web based on a recommendation from our friend Kevin. I migrated all the crucial sites over and left some remnants on Media Temple for a whole year. It was only a few hours ago that I completed the last of the migration.

While I’m a bit sad at the parting, I’m saluting you, Media Temple. It’s been a (mostly) wonderful 7 whole years of service with you. Who knows, you may regain my trust again one day. Until then, Adieu.

The post Adieu, Media Temple appeared first on Alison Foxall.

Firstly, we need to install MAMP. For some reason I can’t find the official site, so I’m going to link you here to download it.

Unpackage it, and install it as you would a normal application on your Mac computer.

What MAMP is going to do is install a server environment right on your computer so you can develop your WordPress site or application locally, and not have to push changes or images or anything else to a remote server. Macintosh, Apache, MySQL, PHP. That is what MAMP stands for. Macintosh being your operating system, Apache being what will serve your web pages, MySQL being the open-source database that powers many applications, including WordPress, and finally PHP, the open-source language that WordPress is run by.

Like I said at the WordPress Meetup, Apache is by default, installed in every Mac. You can go the “hard” route and install MySQL and phpmyadmin, but let’s just go ahead and do this easily with MAMP, which includes phpmyadmin (a popular open-source web based MySQL administration tool).

Let’s go ahead and open up MAMP after you’ve dropped it in the application folder.

You should be greeted with this image once you open the application.

Alright, stop/start server, pretty self explanatory there. The open start page is where your command center will be. It is web based, so clicking this button will launch the browser. You will be greeted with your passwords and navigation that takes you to your php info, phpmyadmin, etc.

Let’s go ahead and click on phpmyadmin and create your first database here. Name it ‘wordpress’ or whatever you like. For collation, we usually use latin_swedish_ci or latin_general_ci, (ci=case insensitive). Click create.

At this time, you should download WordPress from wordpress.org. Let’s go back to the MAMP application as well, and click the third menu, ‘Preferences…’

Click on the ‘Apache’ tab– here you can define where your files will go. I just drop mine in the default ‘Sites’ folder o my Mac, but you can put the default folder anywhere you like.

Since I have mine in ‘Sites’, I created a folder in their called wordpress and dropped my WordPress files right in there. With your browser, go to http://localhost:8888/wordpress/ Depending if you still have port 8888 by default, which I’m assuming you do, this URL should be good to go and you should be greeted with the famous WordPress 5 minute install.

Here you will need the following:

• Database name
• Database username
• Database password
• Hostname
• Table prefix (can leave default)

Your database name is ‘wordpress’ or whatever you named it earlier. Your username and password is on the main start page of MAMP, and by default is root (user)  and root (pass). Hostname is localhost. Table prefix can be the standard wp_, but sometimes you may have more than one WordPress install in your database. In this case you cal name it local_ or wp_local_ or however your naming convention suits your fancy!

Move forward from this page and if everything went correctly, you should be greeted to make your title of your site, description, username and password. Don’t make your username admin, or something similar since that is a security vulnerability. Just as securing a car, securing WordPress or any application, you need to have layers. This is just one.

Uncheck to allow the site the be indexed. This won’t matter anyway since your server isn’t online. Move forward with the installation, log in, and you’re done! From here you can test away on your new local WordPress installation for Mac!

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So, I’m guilty. I’m not very good at following the whole development process. Having a design background, maybe I can be granted an excuse? Typically, a developer (WordPress or otherwise) will develop on their computer with a similar production server environment. Instead of having to use FTP to upload files or download files, it’s all done right then and there from their machine. So there is virtually no waiting. After developing you’d then push all your updates to a staging area, and then finally the production server.

I’m guilty of not doing this. Although it’s standard for you to develop on your machine, I usually throw a WordPress install up online real fast to stage for a client, totally skipping local dev. It’s not the best practice, and I don’t reccomend doing it– especially since my current host, Media Temple, has been real flaky and overal slow. I no longer recommend Media Temple as a host.

Back to the topic at Hand- WordPress and installing it locally–We’ll be going over in detail next Wednesday on how to install it on Windows, Mac, and MAYBE Linux. Depends if we get a uproar on it. I’m guessing most WordPress users in Tampa are on Windows or Mac.

RSVP on Meetup.com and be sure to look us up on Facebook and Twitter!

If you’d like to sign up for our Tampa Bay WordPress newsletter as well, please do so here.

Event Details:

Wednesday, March 14th, 6:30pm
CDB’s Southside Italian Restaurant in South Tampa

The post Installing a local version of WordPress on your computer how-to event appeared first on Alison Foxall.

I was pretty excited to go to SxSW this year. There’s a lot of hype circling this event, and how it’s one of the best interactive events in the country. I was excited to learn new things and take home tons of inspiring ideas and thoughts.

I left rather disappointed.

I didn’t learn anything. I may have learned the best way to get free drinks and free food at the event, or where to get free shirts, but I really didn’t learn anything woth mentioning. Most every talk I went to started as a promotion “I do this for this company, and this company does all these things, and please buy services or products from this company for xyz reasons!” “Hope you enjoyed the talk! Please visit our website at xyz.com! We do xyz the best!”

Or whatever.

Granted, I will say probably out of all the talks I went to, there were about 2 that stuck out. One was the founder of Tom’s shoes who just had an amazing drive to help people and inspire others, and the other was on product design and invoking feelings, and the relations between objects and people.

I couldn’t tell you how much Matt and I spent between the two of us, but it was in the thousands. It wasn’t worth what we took back. So be wary if you’re going to go to it again. We won’t conclude or dismiss the idea of not ever going again, we probably will give the event another chance. But 2011 was the year of suckage for us, and we’d have rather spend our money vacationing in New Zealand.

In regards to the location, pretty sweet college town. There’s a great sushi place around the corner and an awesome diner that we both loved to go to in the morning to watch the unorganized madness of the staff. Very entertaining!

Lastly, I will say, if I were to run an event like this, I’d limit talk promotions to 1 slide and 1 minute long. Get to the point of what your company offers and why it’s “amazing.”

Unrelated note: I opened up freelance business again, starting October 15th. Get your project scopes in!

The post What I learned at SxSW 2011 appeared first on Alison Foxall.

I’ve either been in this business too long and getting old or they’re still just teaching BS in universities. Now, we must remember, everything I know about the web, was never taught to me in a traditional 4-year university like these students have learned. It actually makes me kind of annoyed that these kids aren’t learning on their own. Annoyed and nervous.

CSS started dominating, when? 2004? 2005? 2007 tables were dead? Not really sure the turning point of when using tables for layout was a faux pas, but I remember when I stopped, which was about 2007 when I had gotten my first professional web day job and said, okay Alison, time to strap up and ditch the bad practices you do in your spare time.

Today, it’s rare you see tables for layout. Very rare. They still exist in legacy web applications that were originally built. Or you’ll see them used in the wild for other things as well. Not very often. However, when it comes to e-mail design, there is no using CSS for layout. It’s all tables! Props to Apple Mail for supporting virtually every documented CSS3 property imaginable (Apple Mail seems to be doing better than IE9, now that’s just sad). But, not everyone uses Apple Mail. In fact, the most used email clients are probably the worst: Gmail, Outlook, Hotmail, etc.

Now there are some basic CSS properties you can use such as font-family, font-size, etc. But don’t go whipping out padding and margin thinking that’s going to do anything for you. Because it’s not. Unless your entire list is using Apple Mail, I recommend against it.

So alas, what do we do? We go back 10 years and take it back to tables for layout. Not only tables, but don’t use background images either, gmail hates them.

With that said, you still need to learn how to lay out a design in tables. Table nesting is the best practice for email design. Until e-mail desktop clients and webmail offer better support for CSS, it’s tables all the way. For a list of support, check out campaign monitor.

For e-mail designs, check out Beautiful Spam.

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