Web Development - worth a shot?

[Richard M]

I've been seriously thinking about trying my luck as a freelance web developer (not designer).
I would specialise in XHTML, CSS, PHP and MySQL with a bit of Perl and XML thrown in and would focus on standards compliance and security more than anything else.

I have all the software I need because the lot of it is open source and is freely available.
Because I focus on how things work behind the scenes I don't use Dreamweaver or any other WYSIWYG editor, I use PHPEdit with it's built-in debugging, the MySQL Control Centre and Mozilla for Javascript + CSS debugging with the DOM and Javascript inspectors.

If I decide to go ahead with it then I'll spend some time building PHP code libraries and classes that I can reuse as well as refreshing my memory of the CSS Level 2 spec... but what do I do?

Is it worth it and how difficult is it to get into?
Any advice from any people who actually do this would be greatly appreciated.

[TimmyB]

Don't focus too much on the technology / what you can do.

The important thing is can you get regular work. If you can get the work - you can always with enough determination get the job done. But if you can't find the work - it's game over.

I'm assuming you are in work now? If possible try and find a few customers for web development work you can do in your spare time - get a feel for how easy it's going to be to get work.

Larger businesses are fairly aware of what the web can do for them these days, but frankly aren't going to trust their websites to a one man band. Smaller firms are less clear what the benefits are. When selling you have to convince them that each pound they spend on a website will earn them back more than that in profit - this is tough. Those with a natural enthusiasm for the web generally already have their websites.

Maybe you could approach existing design firms who have the graphic design knowledge but lack the programming / database skills to do more interactive stuff and see if they could put work your way.

Good luck.

[Bifta]

Originally Posted by Richard M

I've been seriously thinking about trying my luck as a freelance web developer (not designer).
I would specialise in XHTML, CSS, PHP and MySQL with a bit of Perl and XML thrown in and would focus on standards compliance and security more than anything else.

I have all the software I need because the lot of it is open source and is freely available.
Because I focus on how things work behind the scenes I don't use Dreamweaver or any other WYSIWYG editor, I use PHPEdit with it's built-in debugging, the MySQL Control Centre and Mozilla for Javascript + CSS debugging with the DOM and Javascript inspectors.

If I decide to go ahead with it then I'll spend some time building PHP code libraries and classes that I can reuse as well as refreshing my memory of the CSS Level 2 spec... but what do I do?

Is it worth it and how difficult is it to get into?
Any advice from any people who actually do this would be greatly appreciated.

If you're reasonably priced (i.e. cheaper than the developer we currently use) I could certainly put some work your way, for example, I have a property search which uses PHP/GD2 and MySQL, I need someone to build an "image manager" i.e. just a single page that users can rearrange the order in which images are shown, I think each image is given an ID number so that would need to be changed in the database, there's a few customisations that are needed and we haven't asked for a quote on it yet but it's definately something we need doing. If you're interested drop me an email.