Eternal student

I find I am always in a "learning mode". Technology changes so very quickly, I am often behind what my clients want to implement. Honesty is the best policy -- I usually can tell them "I'll find out, ASAP." What follows can often turn into a mad scramble.

This week, I finally learned how to use Google calendar. Yeah, I know -- 'bout time! We wanted to add a calendar to frank's website and WebCalendar is incompatible with PHP 5. Embedding Google calendar works just as nicely, with the added advantage of being able to view it on their iMac mail app. Remembering to share the calendar and set attributes for any entries, it has turned out to be a better solution than WebCalendar.

We added a blog to the site, as well. It's been long enough since the last time I set up a blog, I'm having to relearn how to configure the menus and which add ons I want to be using. It's still a work in progress. On the whole, Frank is very pleased with the results, so far. We've even sold one of the original paintings, even though the store is not yet "up". Adding the store is a whole separate adventure. I've never actually created an online storefront before.

On another front, one of my clients needs to update his website information on ICANN. This is where my "teaching" skills need a little refinement. He was unclear on the difference between his registry and his host. I think we've got it straight, now. We'll be moving the registration to another service, updating the information, AND moving to a different host soon.

The most gratifying thing about all of this? I get to do what I love to do. My clients get a professional image online and, lately, the compliments are coming in. As I consider myself more of a student than a professional, I'm always excited when something works the way I intend it. Recently we were hearing "there's nothing on the site! I expected to see more of your artwork." As it turned out, the ones saying that were never actually going to the site -- they were googling the artist's name.

Once we cleared that up, the visitors were well-pleased. In the end, it doesn't hurt my morale at all when someone reports "The site looks great!" Not that selling one of the pieces wasn't great as well.