Musings of ErisDS

Snippet: Magento – Using OR and LEFT JOIN in addAttributeToFilter

ErisDS — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 11:02:52 +0000

I’m still pretty new to Magento, and am learning more about it every day. I’ve been trying to learn all I can about internals such as managing collections & recently stumbled on trying to filter a collection by two attributes. I wanted to build a list of all products that had one OR another attribute set to certain values.

I found lots of documentation on addAttributeToFilter that showed how to add several filters creating an “AND” relationship and also examples how to test if a single attribute had one value or another. Perhaps it’s just me, but I always find it hard to find documentation on how to do anything more complex than the basics in Magento!

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protected function _prepareCollection()
{
$collection = Mage::getModel('catalog/product')->getCollection();
$collection->addAttributeToFilter(
array(
array('attribute'=>'my_attribute', 'eq'=>'0'),
array('attribute'=>'my_other_attribute', 'neq'=>'0')
),
'',
'left'
);
}

After a bit of playing I found you can pass nested arrays with different attribute values to create the “OR” relationship in the generated SQL. To get this working correctly I also had to pass “left” as the final parameter to make Magento use left joins rather than cross joins. It’s neat and tidy once you know it, but a bit awkward to figure out if you don’t!

A Note on Snippets: To me Magento is a mind boggling world of abstraction, configuration and depths of potential knowledge. I find the documentation less than helpful and it is often the simplest pieces of code which are the hardest to either find or remember. These snippets are placed here for my own reference and will hopefully be useful to others. If you find them useful or have any suggestions, please let me know.

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Snippet: Symfony & Propel – Queries with SQL functions

ErisDS — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 12:40:41 +0000

This is a super short snippet that I ALWAYS forget how to do! Often I want to build more complex where clauses with Propel Criteria which use SQL functions such as UCASE, LCASE, LEN and the date functions DAY, MONTH and YEAR. This is possible using Propel & Criteria, but how to do it is not immediately obvious.

The snippet below shows how to select objects from the database which were created in a specific month and year. Using Criteria::CUSTOM, it’s possible to specify a column and a comparison to do with that column. This is quite useful for doing things like building archive lists.

1 2	$c->add(MyObjPeer::CREATED_AT, 'MONTH('.MyObjPeer::CREATED_AT.')='. $month, Criteria::CUSTOM); $c->addAnd(MyObjPeer::CREATED_AT, 'YEAR('.MyObjPeer::CREATED_AT.')='. $year, Criteria::CUSTOM);

A Note on Snippets: When using frameworks such as Symfony it is often the simplest pieces of code which are the hardest to either find or remember. These snippets are placed here for my own reference and will hopefully be useful to others. If you find them useful or have any suggestions, please let me know.

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Future of Web Design London 2010: My thoughts two months on…

ErisDS — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 12:43:16 +0000

Technology conferences are fun, an enormous amount of extremely geeky fun. Most folks can’t wait to get home and blog about all the wonderful things they’ve seen, heard and learnt over the duration of the conference. Those reviews are great insights into what works and what doesn’t, but are they an accurate reflection of the long-term benefits web industry professionals can gain from attending conferences?

Two months on and I’m still reeling from my single day experience of the Future of Web Design Conference. I shared a ticket with colleague and so attended the party & second day of the conference, having the chance to meet some awesome people and learn a great deal. I highly recommend attending the FOWD conference and these are my reasons why.

The benefits of attending FOWD

When I left University and started working full time as a web developer a little less than 2 years ago, I had a strong academic background in computer science and business. The first 15 months of work were spent learning how all my know-how applied in the real world where great theory and best practice often get sidelined to make the realities work in practice (and in budget). Back in May, when the conference was held, I had just started working with my colleagues to develop better working practices and improve the services we offer.

I spent my day at the Future of Web Design London 2010 listening to top class individuals share their experiences of how to make things work in the real world, how to be more efficient and more importantly improve the services and end product that clients receive. Whilst I listened, I reflected on my own experiences and was also reminded of the theories and best practices I’d learnt at University before the real world kicked in. I was also given the opportunity to talk to highly experience professionals about their experiences and share my own ideas of how to better manage and improve relationships with clients.

In essence I was able to review all that I had learned and come up with better ways to do what we do. I realised that my job is NOT about just delivering what’s possible for the client’s budget but about selling the bigger and better ideas to clients. This may be another theoretical idealism but there are two key points to achieving this goal.

Firstly, iterate. Break a project down in to manageable steps (for development and for budget) and continuously iterate and improve a project as budget, time, and technology constraints allow. Secondly, be data driven. Be proactive, source out new ways to develop & improve, and use analytical data as evidence to support new ideas. By breaking down projects into bite-sized, evidenced steps, clients are more likely to buy-in to your ideas and as the ROI builds hopefully so will their willingness to try new things.

So here I am, two months after the conference and still feeling completely re-inspired. I’ve found a direction and a clear picture of what I want to be doing in 5 years. I’ve found a new passion in Analytics and I’ve fallen back in love with my job. I’m pretty sure all of these things are worth far more than the cost of a one day FOWD pass.

Top tips for conference attending

If you are thinking about attending an event like FOWD, or sending some of your staff to a conference I do recommend the following:

It’s only worth attending with an open mind and a willingness to learn.
Don’t bother taking notes. Everything is available online afterwards so spend your time absorbing and reflecting. You’ll come away with far more insights.
Take the opportunity to talk to your peers and your heroes. Don’t waste time being shy, you will learn far more by engaging with the people you respect.
If you are sending staff, make them aware they will have an opportunity to feedback their findings afterwards – this will give them more purpose.
Go with the intention to have a lot of fun, and don’t feel guilty for it!

My top 3 FOWD London 2010 talks

Brett Welch – Rethink Your Job (and Earn More Money)
Dan Rubin – Blending Usability Testing with Interface Design, Prototyping and Rapid Iteration
Niamh Phelan – Google Analytics Masterclass

UPDATE: You can still get the FOWD London 2010 video pass to watch these talks.

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Getting Rid of Non Breaking Spaces ( )

ErisDS — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 12:12:54 +0000

Have you ever tried to parse, process or preg_replace some HTML? Ever tried to do it when the HTML is UTF-8 encoded? Getting rid of white space can be tricky, here’s a few tricks I’ve learned.

I was playing around with debugging some HTML output from Symfony the other day. The HTML was dynamic content added through TinyMCE and I needed to clean superfluous formatting so that the content output looked right. I hate regular expressions and this is the first time I’ve really needed to delve into them properly, so I totally hit a stumbling block when trying to get rid of and other bits of whitespace.

I tried various methods of decoding the content first, to no avail. It turns out the answer is to look for the encoded characters. I found it quite tricky to discover what the encoded values for the white space were and also to detect exactly what white space characters were present, but hopefully these two tips will help you.

UTF-8 representations of white space characters

The following are common white space characters. If you’re missing a few, try out File Format for finding character codes.

\x20 – The standard space or ‘\s’
\xC2\xA0 – The non-breaking space ‘ ’
\x0D – Carriage Return or ‘\r’
\x0A – New Line or ‘\n’
\x09 – The tab or ‘\t’

Discovering which characters are present

Figuring out exactly what white space characters are present in your encoded HTML can be tricky. I used XVI32, which is a hex editor. If you view the source of the HTML you are trying to clean and copy & paste an offending section into the right-hand window it will show the encoded characters in the left hand window.

Hopefully this post might save you some time. If you have a similar problem that isn’t covered here, I’d be interested to know so drop me a comment!

Update: I thought it would be helpful to add an example of how I used these character codes. This simple function replaces all encoded non-breaking spaces with a normal space. It’s only a small snippet, but it might be of use ;).

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function cleanNonBreakingSpaces($text)
{
$text = preg_replace('/\xC2\xA0/',' ',$text);

return $text;
}

You could replace the space with an encoded “normal” space character, although I’m not sure how well that will work:

1	$text = preg_replace('/\xC2\xA0/','\x20',$text);

Or you could check for both encoded or non-encoded non-breaking spaces:

1	$text = preg_replace('/(\xC2\xA0/\| )',' ',$text);

Resources

File Format – An excellent site for looking up character codes.
XVI Freeware Hex Editor – A great tool for discovering hidden characters.

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Snippet: Symfony Forms – Accessing the Object in a Form

ErisDS — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 10:23:29 +0000

Perusing my Google Analytics data shows up some interesting results. For starters the top search query which sends people to my blog is “symfony accessing object in a form”. This has been consistent for several months, but there is no article on my blog which answers that question. I imagine this must be very frustrating for people so it’s about time I added the answer here as a snippet.

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// lib/form/MyObjectForm.class.php
public function configure()
{
$myobject = $this->getObject();
}

In a form class $this refers to the form. Both sfFormPropel and sfFormDoctrine have the method getObject() which will return the object associated with the form. In Symfony, the form ALWAYS has an object associated with it, as even if you don’t pass it one, the form setup will create and associate a new (unsaved) object.

On the default values snippet, I was asked how to set default values for a form in an action. If you want default values for the form, you can set them in the form class as explained in that snippet, or if you want the object to have a default value, override the model with constants (or provide them in your schema).

If you want to pass preset values to the form in your actions.class.php you can do so when you create the form. The constructors for both Propel and Doctrine forms take an object as an argument which the ORM will then use as the associated object. Therefore you can create a new object, assign the values you want and then pass the object to the form as shown below:

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//apps/myApp/modules/myModule/actions/actions.class.php
public function executeMyAction(sfWebRequest $request)
{
// create an object for the form
$myobject = new MyObject();
// object already has default values, or to set additional ones:
$myobject->setValue('Default');
// instantiate the new form with it's object
$this->form = new MyObjectForm($object);
}
?>

Update: It’s probably worth adding, if you’re looking to access the user object specifically, I have more detail on that in another snippet which deals with the user object.

Please let me know if you have any problems with these snippets, or if you find them useful! If you are someone who has come to my blog through this or a similar search query, drop me a comment and let me know if I’ve answered the question, or if there is more that I could help with.

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Upgrading old WordPress installs – not as scary as you think!

ErisDS — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 12:27:38 +0000

Earlier this week I received an email requesting some help with a WordPress install that had been hacked. The site was almost 3 years old and was still running WordPress 2.2. It was quite funny getting to see and play with retro WordPress again, but it had to go.

First of all I got rid of the hack. I didn’t do much research into WP2.2 security holes or spend any time trying to work out how it was done, I ran a text search on the files for the text and links that had been injected into the page and quickly discovered some superfluous functions in the theme footer and some other files. Deleting these got rid of the problem and restored the site to normal.

To be honest, I was nervous about upgrading this blog from WordPress 2.9.2 to 3.0, the software is moving on so quickly now, so the concept of upgrading from 2.2 where there isn’t even the luxury of an upgrade button filled me with dread. I did a little research into upgrading, and put out a feeler tweet to see if anyone had experience useful tips. Someone suggested that I upgrade to 2.8 first then 2.9 and 3.0 but I decided to just go for it to start with.

Upgrading WordPress

The WordPress documentation has extensive information on upgrading WordPress.

In short, the steps involve:

Backing up all your files and database
Deactivating all plugins
Deleting your WordPress install except for the customised parts (wp-config.php, .htaccess, themes, plugins, uploads, images, and any language files)
Downloading the latest version of WordPress and unpacking.
Uploading the new WordPress files to your website
Going to wp-admin and following the instructions to run the upgrade script

The WordPress upgrade documentation goes into great detail, so I highly recommend you follow it word for word. I was very careful to follow the instructions carefully, and I’m pleased to report that the upgrade was a complete success. Not a bug, not a snag, not a hitch – easy peasy!

My Top Tips

Some additional things I recommend doing are:

Be absolutely sure to deactivate all your plugins before deleting files and starting the upgrade process
Once the upgrade process has run, check your website thoroughly before reactivating or upgrading any plugins
If all is OK, take another backup of the database and files at this point
After backing up, reactivate each plugin one-by-one testing the site thoroughly after each reactivation to ensure no bugs are caused and that the plugin provides the expected functionality.
Take note of any plugins which malfunction, see if there is an available upgrade (don’t run it yet) and deactivate the plugin until you have tested them all
Backup again! You’ve now got all the working plugins enabled and the site is almost back to normal… so backup before upgrading your plugins!
Upgrade each plugin one-by-one (and reactivate if necessary), again testing after each upgrade.
You may have to find new plugins to replace old ones which are no longer maintained, but with luck your site should now be back to normal.

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Snippet: WordPress Admin – Tidy Dashboard Widgets By Role

ErisDS — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 11:30:56 +0000

Recently I worked on a WordPress site where I wanted to be able to customise the dashboard for different user roles. WordPress has the default roles of administrators, editors, authors, contributors and subscribers. It’s not too much to assume you might not want to show your editors or authors all the details of your blog posts etc and placing these short code snippets into your theme’sfunctions.php file will allow you to do just that.

Clearing up

Lets get rid of the incoming links widget for authors and editors and then clean up some of the other boxes for everyone:

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function tidy_dashboard()
{
global $wp_meta_boxes, $current_user;

// remove incoming links info for authors or editors
if(in_array('author', $current_user->roles) || in_array('editor', $current_user->roles))
{
unset($wp_meta_boxes['dashboard']['normal ']['core']['dashboard_incoming_links']);
}

// remove the plugins info and news feeds for everyone
unset($wp_meta_boxes['dashboard']['normal']['core']['dashboard_plugins']);
unset($wp_meta_boxes['dashboard']['side']['core']['dashboard_primary']);
unset($wp_meta_boxes['dashboard']['side']['core']['dashboard_secondary']);

}
//add our function to the dashboard setup hook
add_action('wp_dashboard_setup', 'tidy_dashboard');

Here’s a full list of how to unset each of the current default dashboard widgets:

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//Right Now - Comments, Posts, Pages at a glance
unset($wp_meta_boxes['dashboard']['normal']['core']['dashboard_right_now']);
//Recent Comments
unset($wp_meta_boxes['dashboard']['normal']['core']['dashboard_recent_comments']);
//Incoming Links
unset($wp_meta_boxes['dashboard']['normal']['core']['dashboard_incoming_links']);
//Plugins - Popular, New and Recently updated Wordpress Plugins
unset($wp_meta_boxes['dashboard']['normal']['core']['dashboard_plugins']);

//Wordpress Development Blog Feed
unset($wp_meta_boxes['dashboard']['side']['core']['dashboard_primary']);
//Other Wordpress News Feed
unset($wp_meta_boxes['dashboard']['side']['core']['dashboard_secondary']);
//Quick Press Form
unset($wp_meta_boxes['dashboard']['side']['core']['dashboard_quick_press']);
//Recent Drafts List
unset($wp_meta_boxes['dashboard']['side']['core']['dashboard_recent_drafts']);

Add your own

Perhaps rather than the default information, you have other items you’d like to be on the dashboard for authors or editors etc? I often add a dashboard widget to list private pages. Here’s how:

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// function to display widget
function display_dashboard_widget()
{
//define arguments for WP_Query()
$qargs = array(
'post_type'=>'page',
'post_status'=>'private'
);
// perform the query
$q = new WP_Query();
$q->query($qargs);

// setup the content with a list
$widget_content = '

;

// execute the WP loop

while

(

have_posts

(

)

the_post

(

)

;

$widget_content

.get_permalink() .'" rel="bookmark">'. get_the_title() .'

;

endwhile

;

$widget_content

';

// return the content you want displayed
return $widget_content;
}

//function to setup widget
function add_dashboard_widgets()
{
// create a dashboard widget called "private_page_menu_dashboard_widget" with the title "Private Pages Menu" and call our display function to draw it
wp_add_dashboard_widget('private_page_menu_dashboard_widget', 'Private Pages Menu', 'display_dashboard_widget' );
}

// finally we have to hook our function into the dashboard setup using add_action
add_action('wp_dashboard_setup', 'add_dashboard_widgets');

The only problem with wp_add_dashboard_widget is that it doesn’t allow you to define where on the dashboard the widget is placed. Instead it just places the box at the bottom of the left hand side in the ['normal']['core'] array.

I want my private page menu to display at the top on the right hand side of the dashboard, so I am going to add a few more lines to add_dashboard_widgets() to shuffle the boxes around the way I want them. This will be overridden by user settings if the boxes are dragged around, but insures that my authors and editors see the box in an obvious position when they first login.

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function add_dashboard_widgets()
{
// don't forget the global to get all dashboard widgets
global $wp_meta_boxes;

// create a dashboard widget called "private_page_menu_dashboard_widget" with the title "Private Pages Menu" and call our display function to draw it
wp_add_dashboard_widget('private_page_menu_dashboard_widget', 'Private Pages Menu', 'display_dashboard_widget' );

// reorder the boxes - first save the left and right columns into variables
$left_dashboard = $wp_meta_boxes['dashboard']['normal']['core'];
$right_dashboard = $wp_meta_boxes['dashboard']['side']['core'];

// take a copy of the new widget from the left column
$my_widget = array('private_page_menu_dashboard_widget' => $left_dashboard['private_page_menu_dashboard_widget']);

// remove the new widget from the left column
unset($left_dashboard['private_page_menu_dashboard_widget']);

// use array_merge so that the new widget is pushed on to the beginning of the right column's array
$right_dashboard = array_merge($my_widget, $right_dashboard);

// finally replace the left and right columns with the new reordered versions
$wp_meta_boxes['dashboard']['normal']['core'] = $left_dashboard;
$wp_meta_boxes['dashboard']['side']['core'] = $right_dashboard;
}

I hope you find these tricks as useful as I do!

Resources

Power Tips for WordPress Template Developers: Reloaded – more cool back end optimisations, hacks and tweaks
Register Plus WordPress Plugin – customise your registration, login and admin areas
Dashboard Widgets API – more info on adding and removing dashboard widgets

A Note on Snippets: When customising a CMS such as WordPress it is often the simplest pieces of code which are the hardest to either find or remember. These snippets are placed here for my own reference and will hopefully be useful to others. If you find them useful or have any suggestions, please let me know.

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5 Top Resources for Twitter Success

ErisDS — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 22:25:38 +0000

I’ve been experimenting with developing my Twitter account for the last year or so, and this week I published 5 simple steps for getting from beginner to a successful Twitterer: Getting Started with Twitter: 5 Simple Steps. The article is aimed largely at small companies and organisations who are looking to use Twitter to drive traffic to their sites and improve their Brand’s reputation.

I thought I’d post a link here, as I wanted to add my top 5 resources. The following 5 articles go into more depth regarding what Twitter is about, do’s and dont’s and how to make best use of the service. Enjoy!

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The ExplicitWeb Podcast

ErisDS — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 10:50:20 +0000

Last week marked the launch of the 7th ExplicitWeb podcast, complete with our second guest, Rick Nunn. The show seems to be gathering strength with each new episode and I thought it about time I shared my thoughts. If you haven’t heard the podcast yet, I recommend checking us out either at the ExplicitWeb site or our page on iTunes.

ExplicitWeb came from a series of conversations between John O’Nolan, Rob Hawkes and I regarding the state of web industry podcasts. We felt that the existing podcasts were often overly long and self-indulgent, many focus on one subject per show making them hit-and-miss, and most are done by professional podcasters, or people who have become professional podcasters meaning they no longer practise web design and development on a daily basis. The three of us saw an opportunity to do something new & different and ExplicitWeb was born.

Doing things differently means shaking it up a bit (and invariably making some people unhappy). Here’s a few features of ExplicitWeb:

ExplicitWeb is short – the average show time is around 39 minutes. Hopefully this means you won’t get bored.
ExplicitWeb is in 3 segments – each host presents a topic, meaning that in those 39-odd minutes you get 3 bite-sized looks at 3 very different subjects.
ExplicitWeb is flexible – we regularly play with the format: one episode was a 30 minute interview and in another we added an extra segment presented by a guest. We’re open to ideas and always looking to improve.
ExplicitWeb is diverse – we’re from agency, freelance and student backgrounds, developer, designer, and somewhere in the middle and yup we’ve even got the token girl ;)
ExplicitWeb is informal – we try to present our topics like we’re having a chat down your local. We don’t try to be holier-than-thou and what we say comes from our real world experience in a hopefully down-to-earth way…
ExplicitWeb is Explicit – …not because it’s smart or funny, but because that’s how we talk normally.
ExplicitWeb is how it comes (warts and all) - we don’t censor and rarely edit. It keeps it quick & easy to produce and hopefully gives the show that “in the pub” feel!
ExplicitWeb is bi-weekly – despite our time-cutting measures we still only realistically have time to produce a show every 2 weeks. This is definitely the biggest gripe of our listeners! Honestly we’d all LOVE to have the time to do it weekly, but we don’t. Hey, at least it’s not monthly!

The entire point behind ExplicitWeb is that we are web industry professionals, not professional podcasters. We hope that the benefits of this approach outweigh the negatives. That the content we produce is better for it, even if it means less frequent shows.

Check out the show and if you like it please don’t forget to subscribe on iTunes or to the feed if you prefer. Whether you have positive feedback or constructive criticism, let us know and maybe vote for your favourite episode? If you’ve got ideas for topics, or would like to present one yourself, get in touch.

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How to Solve Problematic Client Relationships: Back to Basics

ErisDS — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 18:00:24 +0000

Please Note: This is the companion blog post to a section I did on Explicit Web in Episode 6. This topic is possibly easier to digest in audio form, so I highly recommend you have a listen!

Nightmare clients: We’ve all had them.
They come in all shapes & sizes: needy ones, demanding ones, ones that know too much, ones that know too little, ones that don’t call, ones that don’t pay, and all making our lives a more difficult that we’d like them to be. Using “Transactional Analysis” I’m going to help you figure out what’s going wrong and perhaps set things straight with those problematic client relationships.

The phrase “problematic client relationship” was chosen very carefully. I don’t doubt for a second that your nightmare client is being difficult, but I also believe that it’s far harder to change their behaviour than it is to change your own. More importantly, the key is to realise that the problem between you and your client lies in the relationship between you and your client. By changing the relationship, you can resolve your differences without ever having to directly confront them.

Transactional Analysis

Before you close the page because of the scary psycho-babble term, WAIT! It’s just a posh name for a really clever, yet simple premise that WILL MAKE YOUR LIFE EASIER. Please bear with me whilst I attempt to explain it in as few words as possible then I’ll cut to the fun stuff with examples.

Transactional Analysis (TA) theory says that when ever two people communicate, they do so whilst acting in one of three roles: parent, adult or child. These aren’t actual parents, adults and children, they are concepts: e.g. a parent assumes authority & takes a lot of responsibility, a child accepts the authority of others and takes very little responsibility and an adult is the “grown-up” happy middle ground. A parent and child can successfully communicate (although it’s not always appropriate) and so can two adults, but any other pairing would likely result in communication breakdown.

Most communication should be done adult to adult. When one person starts out or inadvertantly slips from adult into the parent or child role, it causes communication to become strained, or worse can force the other person to reactively slip into the opposite role. This can be a source of major frustration and difficulty for either party.

TA‘s core principle is that whenever there is a breakdown in communication, it can always be attributed to one or the other parties acting in an inappropriate role for the situation. Applying this to the service provider – client relationship, communication should always be adult to adult. Each party on equal terms, consulting and working together to achieve a common goal. With that in mind, let’s analyse some typical scenarios.

Classic Clients

Have a read through these classic client scenarios and see if you can figure out what the cause of the breakdown in communication is according to TA. I explain my thoughts below, but they’re all open to interpretation!

Classic Client 1: You get an email from a client, containing a vague brief for a 5 page website. After asking for some more detail, they reply they aren’t too sure, can they pay you to sort it all out? After all you’re the professional! You take on the job, hire a copywriter & are really enjoying having the freedom to express yourself on a project. 2 weeks before launch , you receive and email from the client saying: “We’re really sorry, but we’ve changed our minds, we don’t like the website any more. It just really isn’t what we had in mind.”

Classic Client 2: You get an email from a client, containing a detailed brief for a new website. You agree to work with them and set about designing the site. You show the client what is your best design yet, you’re really happy with it and they are too, only they want to make a few minor amends. You concede, after all it’s only a few tiny changes. You start the build stage, and receive a couple of requests for further “5 minute amends”, again they’re only small so you oblige. A few weeks before launch the client sees a near-complete working example and provides some feedback: “In my head the latest news block was going to scroll, oh and can we change the headers to be large, bold, red, and comic sans?”.

“…whenever there is a breakdown in communication, it can always be attributed to one or the other parties acting in an inappropriate role for the situation.”

My thoughts

Classic Client 1: This client is clearly not willing to take on any responsibility or authority for their project i.e. acting in the “child” role. I’d guess that their initial decision to be uninvolved made them feel less able to communicate their own thoughts later on, only communicating when it became obvious that they were going to have to pay for something that didn’t meet their expectations. The service provider was almost tricked into assuming responsibility, I mean who wouldn’t jump at the opportunity to have free reign over a project?

Classic Client 2: Slowly over the course of the project, this client has grown accustomed to getting their own way, to being the “parent” or “authority”. Now they expect changes they request to be carried out and the service provider is feeling unable to communicate their objections. This gradual change of roles is really hard to detect & is a great example of the frustation that is felt by the “child”.

In Conclusion…

So what have we learnt from this exercise? Using TA we have an excellent tool for analysing our relationships and determining the root cause of a communication problem. However determining the cause is only half the story – we can also infer from TA how to go about resolving communication breakdowns.

If the problem is caused by slipping out of the appropriate “adult” role then clearly the resolution is to retake the correct role. In the same way that one party adopting the parent role can force the other to react in the child role, it should be possible to maintain the adult role and coerce your client to respond in kind. This principle should guide your actions but does require skill and good judgement.

It is far harder to apply the principles of TA “after the fact” – what it is better at, is prevention. Educating your clients throughout your relationship as to what should be expected from each of you is a great way to help ensure your client holds up their end of the bargain. I tend to find that life is full of little slips, where one or other person in a communication slips into the wrong role temporarily. TA allows us to identify and recover from these slips much more quickly, averting disaster.

Client: “You need to learn how to run a business. You fucking kids don’t know anything, and just want to rip all us honest business people off.” Clients from Hell

Finally, there is just no accounting for some people (I recommend a visit to the Clients from Hell blog). Sometimes we have to execute disaster avoidance – if a new client approaches you acting as parent or child, and one or two carefully worded communications doesn’t resolve the problem, then cut your losses or resolve yourself to a nightmare project. Some client relationships are best solved by not having them at all.

Relevant & Related Writings

Avoiding nightmare clients – John O’Nolan
Educating Clients to say Yes – Boag World
Educating your client on web development successfully. – Smashing Magazine
The importance of teaching your clients and being the boss – Sam Brown

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