The original Paper & Cake site was being run by ProStores. Abby wanted to ditch that and put everything under one umbrella. She also wanted a new look, which was handled by the equally lovely and talented Christine McClain over at Christine McClain Design and Branding Studio.

In the new site, the latest WordPress e-commerce plugin was used. Again, the improvements made to the 3.8.x version made things a little easier to manipulate.

All of Abby’s products are downloadable PDFs, with instant fulfillment once a customer purchases through PayPal. A section was also added in the backend so that Abby can feature a “See This Party in Real Life” button on some of her products and link to a blog post where she writes about how her products have been used for real parties.

We used the Gold Cart version to get more display options and more options in general. Everything turned out nice and clean (a tribute to Chris’ design):

We also transferred all of Abby’s old blog posts from Blogger to the new WordPress build:

We’ve added some ads to the sidebar in the blog, and there’s some nice tab action going on with the categories, tags and archives. Also, on some blog posts, Abby can add a “Buy This” link to link back to a specific product she is blogging about.

Now, Abby can manage everything Paper & Cake from one place, from adding and updating her products, to changing her page content to blogging.

Overall, this was a fun build and it turned out great. Thanks again to Chris and Abby for all your hard work!

If you don’t do a lot of coding in WordPress, you can go right ahead and skip this post. But if you do some coding, or maybe want to take a peek at some coding and PHP machinations, read right on!

In working for a site for a recent client, I found that I needed to display her list of tags in her blog in two columns. It sounds easy, but there’s actually precious little documentation about this. After hours of fruitless Google searching and general banging my head against the wall, I finally came up with a solution that worked (or at least it looks like it’s working!) and wanted to share.

The issue: Displaying tags in two columns in WordPress

Again, this sounds like it would be so simple. I was able to find documentation on how to display blog categories in two columns, so I figured tags would be easy. Not!

By default, WordPress displays tags in a tag cloud:

Well, I didn’t want a tag cloud. I wanted a list. That’s easy enough if you manipulate some built-in WordPress code (reference the Codex here).

But what about columns? Not just columns, but dynamically generated columns? You see, I didn’t want to resort to some janky manual method and use a table. If my client is going to make a million tags in the future, I’d hate for her to have to touch code just to make her columns look pretty. No way!

I know there are ways to display columns in CSS3, but I didn’t want to deal with the headache that is Internet Explorer, so I wanted to avoid using any CSS to generate the columns. I wanted this dynamic, dammit.

This was the first solution I found: Display tags in 3 columns

Great reference! It actually worked, too, and was easy to change from 3 columns to 2 columns. And so I thought I was hunky dory.

However, I had to convert a whole bunch of old categories into tags, and that’s where my problem started. Using the coding convention above only rendered the first tag and left all the others blank.

I tried to find another solution elsewhere, but as I said, there is precious little out there on this topic. (What, nobody else doesn’t want to use a tag cloud?)

Finally, based on some PHP knowledge and the above article, I finally found a solution. Now, some real PHP programmer is probably going to look at this and slap me upside the head and cringe, but hey, it worked! (If you can improve it, please let me know.)

Code: Displaying WordPress tags in two columns

<?php
	$tags = get_tags();
	$tags_count = count($tags);
	$number = ceil($tags_count / 2);

	$args = array('number' => $number);
	$tagsleft = get_tags($args);

	$args = array('number' => $number, 'offset' => $number);
	$tagsright = get_tags($args);

	$html = '<ul class="catleft">';
	foreach ($tagsleft as $tag){
		$tag_link = get_tag_link($tag->term_id);

		$html .= "<li><a href='{$tag_link}' title='{$tag->name} Tag' class='{$tag->slug}'>";
		$html .= "{$tag->name}</a></li>";
	}
	$html .= '</ul>';

	$html .= '<ul class="catright">';
	foreach ($tagsright as $tag){
		$tag_link = get_tag_link($tag->term_id);

		$html .= "<li><a href='{$tag_link}' title='{$tag->name} Tag' class='{$tag->slug}'>";
		$html .= "{$tag->name}</a></li>";
	}
	$html .= '</ul>';
	echo $html;
	?>

So what the hell is going on here? Here we go:

$tags = get_tags();
$tags_count = count($tags);
$number = ceil($tags_count / 2);

OK, so get_tags() is a standard piece of WordPress code. (Read about it here.) All this piece of code is doing is getting the tags for the blog (line 1). Then, it’s counting how many tags there are (line 2). Then it’s saying, divide that number by 2 and make it a nice, whole number (line 3). We have two columns, so that’s why we’re dividing by 2.

$args = array('number' => $number);
$tagsleft = get_tags($args);
$args = array('number' => $number, 'offset' => $number);
$tagsright = get_tags($args);

The get_tags() code can have a number of arguments. ‘Number’ is the number of tags you want to display. In line 1, we’re saying that number we determined (tags divided by 2) is how many tags we want to call in the ‘number’ argument. In line 2, we’re saying that get that number for the left column of tags.

The get_tags code also has an argument called ‘offset.’ It is just like it sounds – offset the list by a certain number and grab all the tags from that point. In the second half of the code, we’re saying “get that number of tags divided by 2, offset the list by that much and then grab that number of tags for the right side column.”

$html = '<ul class="catleft">';
	foreach ($tagsleft as $tag){
		$tag_link = get_tag_link($tag->term_id);

		$html .= "<li><a href='{$tag_link}' title='{$tag->name} Tag' class='{$tag->slug}'>";
		$html .= "{$tag->name}</a></li>";
	}
	$html .= '</ul>';

	$html .= '<ul class="catright">';
	foreach ($tagsright as $tag){
		$tag_link = get_tag_link($tag->term_id);

		$html .= "<li><a href='{$tag_link}' title='{$tag->name} Tag' class='{$tag->slug}'>";
		$html .= "{$tag->name}</a></li>";
	}
	$html .= '</ul>';
	echo $html;

The rest of this is just pretty standard output for tags (again, consult the Codex). What I did here was create two unordered lists, one for the right side and one for the left, and loop through all the tags. I’m displaying the name of the tag and linking to that tag’s page. You can CSS the hell out of this if you like.

What renders is a nice two-column structure that’s pretty even (unless you have super long tag names and that throws off your spacing a little bit). But you get the point.

But hey, smart guy! What if my number doesn’t neatly divide by 2!

That shouldn’t be a problem. Even if there’s one less tag in the right column, everything should still get called correctly. That’s because the ceil function rounds up. For instance, if you had 13 tags total, the ceil function would actually spit out the number 7 (it’s rounding up 6.5). So, you’d get 7 tags in the left column. The right column would still offset by 7 (which is correct) and would want to call 7 tags. But you’ve only got 6 left and it doesn’t care. It’ll display 6.

(Of course, if I’m talking crazy talk, feel free to tell me so.)

Want to see the tags columns in action? Go here: Paper and Cake blog (click on tags in the right column).

But in reading through to the end, I saw this comment from friend and awesome copywriter Alisa:

The in-between time is the most underrated portion of any conference. Sure, the sessions are good, but that’s just one person sharing their ideas. Lunches, dinners, drinks… those are the places where creative people play off of each other’s genius.

This is why I think it’s important for me to get out there more during the year: less time spent in sessions in hotel basements, and more time talking and collaborating with people all around the country. It’s less conventional but I’m betting that it will be infinitely more inspirational, and better because it’s spread out throughout the year.

How effing brilliant, I thought! And Alisa is dead-on.

I enjoy going to things like CFC and meeting a whole boatload of new people. But what I really enjoy is hanging out on trains, going to restaurants, talking to people on the way to the swag bags, talking to people in line while waiting for coffee. It’s those little sparks put together that sometimes create the larger ideas that move and shake us.

It’s those conversations with people of all kinds of walks of life and business perspectives that help me drive my own business or give me great ideas to implement. I enjoy those smaller groups because you can share things so much easier and the ideas come rapid-fire. Sometimes the encouragement comes rapid-fire, too. But any way you shake it, that tight-knit community is sometimes just as valuable — if not more valuable — than going to the big events and meeting a boatload of new people.

I am a huge fan of the standing date. My friend India and I try to get together every few weeks at a local coffee shop. We talk business, we talk design, we talk life. And I know I walk away feeling inspired and invigorated every time. (It helps that she’s super energetic and ambitious and that in turn, makes me feel like less of an old lump.) We share a lot of ideas and motivate each other. It’s one of the best few hours I spend on myself and away from business every month.

So, I love Alisa’s idea. Go out there and foster your small communities. Find people to collaborate with. Have standing coffee dates. And travel to talk to your friends. (I like to do that too, since I travel a lot and make it a point to get together with as many people as I can in a given city.)

I only hope Alisa makes a stop in my town ’cause I’d love to sit and chat with her too.  ;^)

A couple of my friends kept asking me week after week for tips, and so I compiled a few of my favorite things into this handy list:

Mockups and Planning

GoMockingbird (www.gomockingbird.com)
I use Mockingbird to make wireframes. I really like the interface and have been using it since it was in beta. I was actually able to make a super quick wireframe on the spot for a client to illustrate a potential layout for a web page. The client was impressed. Anything that makes you look like a genius, eh?

Mockingbird is not free — I think it’s $9 bucks a month or something like that — but it’s totally worth it to me. I hate drawing wireframes in InDesign…

SlickPlan (www.slickplan.com)

I use this to draw sitemaps. Some of the exporting is a little funky — especially if you export to a PDF. I usually export out an HTML version of my sitemap and then just take a screengrab of it. Using SlickPlan totally beats having to draw sitemaps in Photoshop, Illustrator or InDesign!

(Did I mention it’s free?)

JumpChart (www.jumpchart.com)
I really, really like JumpChart. A friend of mine hipped me to it after I’d been using Mockingbird for a while. It’s kind of a mash between Mockingbird and SlickPlan. It’s a great way to plan the content of a site into actual pages, and also a great place to have your client enter in their content (so you can all make sure there’s not something missing).

Create an account for your client, determine the structure of your site, and you’re on your way to hopefully managing website content in a neato interface.

Various pricing plans are available. I’m a little cheap, so admittedly, I only have one active project on my free account. But it’s really super sweet if you’re willing to pay monthly.

Tips and stuff

Son of Suckerfish
I used to get asked about dropdown menus in CSS all the time. This is my Bible when it comes to dropdowns. I use this and don’t even bother to use plugins in WordPress whenever I need dropdown menus.

Bonus: It works in Internet Explorer! (Well, sometimes there are bugs, but they’re easily fixable.)

Rounded Corners reference
I always forget how to do rounded corners in CSS. I reference this page a ton. CSS3.info also has other fun stuff.

CSS ribbons
Very cool tutorial on how to do nifty ribbon effects. This works in Internet Explorer too. I found this article via Twitter one day and actually needed to do this effect for a project at that exact time. How fortuitous.

CSS3Pie
My friend Micah told me about this resource once, and it was a godsend. Many times, you bang your head against a wall because Internet Explorer refuses to cooperate with you. But I want rounded corners! And drop shadows! And gradient backgrounds! 

CSS3Pie makes certain CSS3 decorations possible in Internet Explorer. You will never leave home without it.

Web Fonts

FontSquirrel
One of my favorite web font resources. Lots of fun free fonts for use. It even has a handy tool you can use to convert fonts so they can be used with @font-face on the web. (Make sure you check your licenses, though … you can’t just do this willy-nilly! I like to play by the rules.)

Google Web Fonts
Well, of course Google has some great web fonts. Copse is a particular favorite of mine. They even make hosting the font easy.

Smashing Magazine
There are always great tips at Smashing Magazine, whether it’s one of their lists of great WordPress themes, an article about a web trend, or tips on CSS. This is a staple on my Google Reader account.

Web Content & Strategy/Marketing

Clout: The Art and Science of Influential Web Content
This book is a terrific resource if you want to learn more about content strategies and writing for the web. I bought this book on a trip to Seattle and wound up reading half of it on the plane ride back home.

It’s a great book if you want to educate clients about their content and how it can further their website’s cause and get people to buy things. It can also help you formulate some plans if your client hasn’t a clue about what they need to write for his or her site.

Other Books I Like

Web Designer’s Idea Book Vol. 1 & Vol. 2
I love both these books and flip through them for ideas and inspiration a lot.

Bulletproof Web Design
I think there is a newer version of this book. I bought my copy several years ago, but it taught me a lot about CSS and is a great resources. If you’re still used to coding in tables, get this book to learn how to break out of tabledom.

Codin’ for the Web
I actually own several books by Charles Wyke-Smith. (He has a book about scripting with JavaScript and AJAX that I need to jump into soon.) Codin’ For the Web talks about PHP and forms and creating a super rudimentary content management system. It’s written for non-geniuses (like me). If you want to learn a little bit about PHP and coding for educational purposes, pick up this book. You may not know everything when you’re done reading it, and you still may not want to write a line of code, but at least you’ll have a basic understanding of what’s going on.

jQuery for Dummies
I’m totally a dummy when it comes to jQuery. This book helped me understand some scripts and jQuery on a super basic level. Heck, I was able to use some of the stuff in this book for a client project. I was proud as punch … and you will be too if you get to use some of the tips in the book!

On my iPad

Codosaurus
When I bought my iPad, one of the first things I looked for was a tool for web development. I found Codosaurus and was hooked. Pretty interface — hey, I’m a designer and I pay attention to what interfaces look like! Easy to use. You can edit files directly on the server. It’s nifty for quick edits.

It doesn’t have an FTP client so you can work with files locally and I do miss my pretty colors from Dreamweaver, but it’s a solid program. I’ve been able to do quick updates from airports, the passenger seat of a car and all kinds of mobile places. Nifty!

Lastly …

Google and Twitter.

I think 85 percent of my questions about anything development-related have been answered by Google and carefully bookmarked in my Evernote account. And if I’m really stumped, I’ll throw out a question to the Twitterverse and someone will answer it.

The internets rule!

If you’ve got other great resources, please share in the comments. Thanks for reading!

There’s always some kind of information overload after these things, but here’s the Cliffs Notes version:

Luke Mysse & Planning
Luke was inspirational and awesome (as he was last year). And he double-dog dared us have some goals and make them happen. Yes, sir! His tips:

• Write down your goals or else you’ll forget them (and they won’t happen).
• Make your goals big and juicy. Stay away from the mundane. Juicy goals provide motivation. And of course they should be audacious.
• Find your core values and strengths. Use those as a guideline for your goals.

Steve Gordon & Being Creative 24/7
As my friend Joanna tweeted during Steve’s presentation: “Steve Gordon has given me permission to play.” Damn straight! I loved Steve and his philosophy and his verve for life. We need more Steves in the world. And I’m glad he’s sort of reinforced a lot of things I do already so I don’t feel bad about it.

• Don’t be afraid to play. In the middle of the day, even. You’ll make it up somewhere. (Maybe I will go on those bike rides I keep lamenting I haven’t had time to do.)
• Leave work to do work. (I do this a lot, going to a local coffee shop when home is distracting. Or when I feel like I have to get stuff done.) Steve takes it to an extreme sometimes, flying out to see friends and work. I like that idea. Maybe if I get my butt in gear and plan well, I should do that!

Von Glitschka & Becoming a Hired Gun
Von Glitschka’s opening line was “don’t suck!” That appealed to the snark in me. And of course, you should never suck. And maybe do a few of these things:

• Don’t wait to get some of the work you really want to do. Do it. Do some personal projects that reflect that work
• Corollary to that: Share the work you’re doing. You never know who’s going to see it. And it might lead to awesome projects that you really, really want to do.
• Challenge yourself creatively.
• Supersize your clients. There’s a lot you can offer them.

Allen Murabayashi & Marketing
I liked Allen’s presentation a lot. It was super informative and funny. He had lots of SEO tips (most of which I won’t rehash here):

• Look at your keywords. You want unsolicited traffic and search hits. And they’re not looking for you by name … they’re looking for what you do. So adjust your keywords accordingly!
• Don’t focus on just your website. Widen your online footprint.

(I guess I should finally start that Facebook fan page my husband has been pestering me to do for ages. “I think it would help you,” he says. “I don’t think you market yourself enough.” Husbands. Such sages.)

That’s kind of it in a nutshell. I’ve definitely got to take some time to distill some information further, but CFC kicked off my thought process for sure!

I also had a terrific time meeting up with friends old and new and finally meeting in person some folks I’ve been collaborating with on projects over the last year (hi Rochelle and Julie!). And those lunches, dinners, train rides and walks have provided a lot of great tips and lots of time to compare business notes and brainstorm and just well, vent. So here’s to a fun and productive time in Chicago!

That’s the story of Mimi, a fabulous young lady here in Sacramento who wanted to open an online high-end vintage clothing store. Mimi and her mom run Vintage YSJ, a nice little vintage clothing store in downtown Sacramento. Mimi wanted to open her own online store, BTM Vintage, and this was the result:

(You can view the shop at http://btmvintage.com.)

My friend India Curry did the design, which is super clean and really well-done. I handled all the WordPress coding and the e-commerce component, which was done using the WordPress e-commerce plugin.

I think I’ve mentioned previously the love-hate relationship I have with the WordPress e-commerce plugin. For this project, I wound up using a pretty new version (the 3.8 series). The folks over at GetShopped had revamped the whole thing, and I was pleasantly surprised. Suddenly, the plugin was much easier to use. They got smart and made the products custom post types, which made it easier to call stuff on non-ecommerce pages (see the New Arrivals as an example).

Some things are still a little weird, and there are certain things that I wish would be built in (like better product sorting on the admin end), but overall, it was an improvement. So, I think I’ve moved closer to the love end of the scale when it comes to WordPress e-commerce.

I definitely learned a lot about manipulating the e-commerce component, and it was a ton of fun to work on. And all of us were proud of the end result. And Mimi was amazing throughout the process, always staying upbeat. Her enthusiasm kept me going and was a great motivator.

So please, do check BTM Vintage out and like ‘em on Facebook even! Thanks, Mimi and India!

It had been almost six years since my husband and I had gone out East, and ever since we thought of making this trip, I had one mission in mind: To find tangible evidence of the very first graphic design project I did seven years ago, a project where I was actually paid to create something!

Backstory: In 2004, I was in a different career. I was a journalist back then. Graphic design was the thing I did on the side because I enjoyed it and liked bending my brain in different ways.

I worked in sports journalism, and through my job, I became friends with Pete DiVito, a sports information assistant at the University of Delaware. Pete eventually moved on to Goldey-Beacom College, a small school in Delaware that at the time, was transitioning from the NAIA to NCAA Division II.

To coincide with the transition, Goldey-Beacom wanted a new athletic logo (pictured here). They had been using the school crest and wanted something simpler and something that screamed Lightning (their nickname). So, that’s what we came up with. I barely knew how to use Illustrator at the time. But it got done, the college liked it, and it was promptly put on t-shirts and a banner that was hung in their gym. Pete gave me a t-shirt with the logo (which I still have and have never worn). I was a wide-eyed kid in awe. That’s my stuff up there! This is freaking cool!

The piece de resistance was going to be the basketball floor. You see, Goldey-Beacom did not have a traditional wood floor at the time. They were going to install one with the new logo on it. I never got to see it. I moved off to California by then. For years, I’d search through photos on their athletic website, hoping to see the floor. No dice.

Fast forward seven years later and the trip to Delaware. I was going to find this damn logo, come hell or high water.

School was out, so the joint was practically empty. I neared the gym. Holy smokes! Banners with my logo! My logo on the floor! However, there were some dudes playing basketball. Luckily, they were playing half-court, so they weren’t all over the middle of the floor, but I admittedly felt a little skeezy going in there and snapping photos while there were people in there.

(So, forgive the quality of the photos. I shot fast and from far away because I didn’t want to look creepy!)

Here’s the logo in lights:

And on a banner near the athletic offices:

And finally, the floor:

Oh, the floor. Such a mild tragedy. As I mentioned before, I knew next to nothing about using Illustrator when I did this project, so I didn’t know about outlining fonts and whatnot. Hence, the floor doesn’t look like everything else. Oh well. I’ve learned a lot since then.

It was neat to jump into the way-back machine and see this stuff. I know I’ve come a long way since then and I’ve grown as a designer in those years. I was just a happy kid back in the day, happy that someone wanted to pay me to make something and then splash it all over their school. And it was nice to see that they were still using it after seven years.

Thanks for the smiles, Goldey-Beacom!

This build is for Magnes Sisters, a high-end bag company based in New York. I worked with the lovely Tricia Okin of Papercut on this project. Tricia pulled me in to handle the e-commerce aspect of the site and to do some blog styling.

The entire site was built in WordPress, with the e-commerce portion being handled by the WP E-commerce plugin. That plugin and I have a love-hate relationship, but we made it work.

The final result (you can also visit http://www.magnessisters.com to see it):

Fun stuff!

The hardest part, really, was trying to manipulate all those shopping cart templates. There was a lot of wading into PHP code and trying to figure out what was where in that plugin. But the final product turned out pretty awesome, and it’s probably one of the best-looking carts I’ve worked thanks to Tricia’s clean and stellar design.

Another WordPress build went in the books, and this one has actually been up for a little while: It’s a site for Matt D’Amour, a health and wellness coach. His site is called My Inside Out Wellness.

Credit for the design goes to Velvette de Laney at Dewdrop Studios.

This site is built entirely in WordPress, and also includes an e-commerce component so that Matt can sell different packages and sessions, as well as some products. He can also charge for event tickets.

While the site itself didn’t need anything overly complicated (except maybe the e-commerce part), it was a serious exercise in WordPress templating. I think there are at least eight different templates involved. And then there are the different sidebars that show up (or don’t show up, depending on the page).

It was a lot of fun, though. It sounds nerdy, but I love figuring out page templates. And it was fun working with a great designer.

I have to say that going solo is one of the most challenging and yet most rewarding things I have ever done. But I’ve made it one year and I’m not broke and I’m not homeless, so something must be going right!

I feel very fortunate in that I found great friends, colleagues and resources along the way. I have been inspired by my fellow solopreneurs and creatives and would not be here without so many people’s support and faith in me.

You usually learn a lot in your first year of business, and this was no exception! I hope to help others as I have been helped, so here goes (in no particular order):

Learn to love the business side.

As a wise person once said, “If you don’t treat it like a business, it’ll always be a hobby.”

Business is hard work. It’s also not always fun. We’re creative folks. We’re all about the drawing, the thinking, the concepts, the colors, the fun stuff. Thinking about marketing and money and taxes and other business-y stuff makes us cringe. But this is the heart and soul of having a sustainable business. Solo folks don’t have marketing departments or accountants behind them. So suck it up, become smart about your business, know how much money you’ve got and that’s how you’ll keep being able to do all the fun stuff.

Organization is a must.

If you ever walked into my studio, you would look me in the face and call me a liar for talking about organization. But really, it’s all about keeping things straight in a way that is comfortable for you. Do you know what all your outstanding projects are? Who you have to follow up with? Where all your reference files are? What all the passwords for the 10 billion sites you’re developing are? What invoices have to get sent out?

I do, despite the fact that my studio is an atrocious mess. I may not look organized, but I know where all the important stuff is. You don’t have to get all OCD about it. Again, find what works for you. I have a nice folder system for all my client work, and I have some checklists on my computer to keep me on track. You know how you think, so take that and run with it.

Put everything in writing.

I learned a lot of expensive lessons because I didn’t put things in writing. Write you proposals and your creative briefs! Make sure your clients understand them! That way, when scope goes out of control or you’re not sure what you were supposed to do weeks later, you have a roadmap (and you can show it to your out-of-control client and try to mitigate some disasters).

Share your knowledge and help others.

I’m not saying you have to give away all your trade secrets. But being helpful is always a plus. First off, you’ll put something in your karma bank. Second, you’ll usually learn something along the way . Third, you can position yourself as an expert in your field and people will come beating down your door if they feel you know what you’re talking about.

I have gotten jobs because someone e-mailed me and said, “I saw you were talking about X on this message board and you really sounded super knowledgeable. Would you be interested in working on this project, doing X?”

Besides, people like working with friendly folks. Helping others shows you’re open to collaboration, which can lead to awesome projects.

Don’t be shy. (Though it’s really hard not to be.)

Most people who know me would scoff at me if I ever said I was shy. But really, I am. I have a confession: I am terrified of the telephone. Nothing gives me the heebie-jeebies more than the thought of making a cold call. (And you wonder how I survived as a sports reporter for five-plus years with this fear of the telephone!) I also feel awkward in a room where I don’t know anyone.

But guess what? You have to swallow your fears and just put yourself out there. How is anyone ever going to know what you do or how awesome you are if you don’t talk to anyone else? Besides, once you find one person to talk to, it doesn’t seem so scary anymore.

I know you don’t want to sound like a shameless self-promoter, but you have to do some promotion. You don’t have to be arrogant. Be friendly and talk about yourself a little. It will get you further than being a wallflower.

Always carry business cards! You never know when your next potential client is going to show up!

True story: I was once at a local event here in Sacramento, volunteering at a booth with my husband. This was not a design-related event at all. But a photographer came up to our journalism-related booth to ask about shooting for small local publications. And he mentioned he was hoping to get a portfolio up. And my friend and my husband who were both in the booth pointed to me and said, “Hey, she’s a web designer.” I didn’t have my new business cards on me (d’oh!), but I luckily had one old one left in my wallet. He contacted me a week later.

You also never know if you’re going to share an elevator with someone important, so be prepared!

It’s going to be hard sometimes. Just accept it.

It sometimes irks me when people say, “Oh, you’re so lucky … you get to roll out of bed and walk 10 feet to your office and work from home. You have such an easy life.”

It’s not easy. There are lots of terrific things about going solo, but lots of things that suck about it. Accept that for what it is and move on. And make sure you have really good friends who don’t mind it when you vent occasionally (or a lot).

No (wo)man is an island.

Having a great support system is key. Whether you need moral support, or have a question or whatever, always remember that you’re not the only one in your boat.

Like the motto of the Creative Freelancer Conference says, “You work solo, but you are not alone.”

Related to this …

You are not Superman (or woman), nor do you ever need to be.

Sure, some of us know how to do a lot of stuff and do it well. But you don’t need to do everything. Some of the best projects I’ve worked on have been with a team. It’s nice to not have to worry about everything for once. It’s also nice when you’re not the main point of contact sometimes.

There’s nothing wrong with collaboration. You might learn a lot of new things along the way. You might push yourself in one skillset because you suddenly don’t have to worry about 10,000 other things. You might wind up with bigger and bigger projects because you don’t know how to do one thing that’s essential to the contract, but you’ve got a buddy who does.

Which leads me to …

Don’t say no immediately.

I’m not saying you should never say no. There are times you have to or you will go insane. But the key is not saying no immediately.

I have a friend who always says, “I can’t do web design.” Bollocks, I say! I always tell her that she can design a website — she’s got solid design skills –  but she just doesn’t know how to code it and put it on the internets. That doesn’t mean she has to say no. She just needs to find a web guru (as I wave my hands wildly). You see what I mean? Saying no off the bat just shut her off to about a million possibilities right there!

A teacher of mine once said, “Don’t say you don’t know how to do something right off the bat. Chances are that when it comes time to actually do the project, you’ll know how to do it … or you’ll know someone who does.”

But on the other side of the coin, be honest about your limitations and that of your partners. If you’ve thought about it and it’s truly impossible, then say no. But if there’s a fighting chance that it is possible, then don’t say no until you’ve explored all the options.

You won’t like everyone you work with, and vice versa. But always be nice about it.

I’m here to make friends sometimes, but not all the time.

If you encounter someone you don’t really like, don’t make it more miserable than it needs to be — for both your sakes. Just smile a lot, always be professional and then go vent to your friends later.

And don’t be offended if someone doesn’t like you. It’s not like you’re working with that person every waking minute. You’re not everyone’s cup of tea. I know, I hate to burst your bubble.

Smile a lot. Be a good person. Be the person you want to work with.

Let’s face it. No one wants to work with Debbie Downer. Or a consistently negative person. Or a consistent slacker.

But if you’re upbeat and friendly and approachable, people will flock to you. I still think one of the highest compliments I have ever received had nothing to do with my design skills or web skills — it was a client who called me and said, “We really enjoyed working with you on a previous project, and we really want to work with you on this bigger project because we just love your attitude and helpfulness.”

Staying positive is not only good for business, it’s good for the rest of your life, too!

Always keep learning.

Read a lot. Talk to your fellow designers. Ask questions. Take a class. It’s the only way to grow as a designer / businessperson / regular human being.

Have an unwavering faith in yourself.

It’s not easy to go solo. Sometimes things go horribly awry and really, there’s no one else that can fix your situation. This is when you have to dig deep down and trust that everything will turn out OK. It’s one thing to have people tell you it’s going to be OK, but you have to truly believe it yourself. So yeah, always have faith in yourself. When you have nothing else to hold on to, at least you’ll have that. And then things start turning around. Honestly.

Enjoy the ride.

Well, there was a reason you went solo in the first place, right? Savor it! Enjoy the good stuff, learn from the not-so-good stuff. You’re already ahead of the game because you decided to ditch working for The Man, so whenever you get down, just remember that and I guarantee it will bring a smile to your face.