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Web Development – “IN DEMAND” jobs

Posted by Eric on December 19, 2008  |   No Comments »

As I’m sure anyone who hasn’t been living under a rock lately has heard, there is an economic recession going on around the country.

But, what I find very interesting is how despite the “recession” certain areas of the economy seem to be holding their own or even growing.  

Web Development might be one of those areas (interesting that a web developer would notice this).  According to odesk.com, several areas of web development continue to grow.  Odesk is an outsourcing job board sort of web site.  They match up freelance people to available projects – sort of a job board deal.

So, on the Odesk blog, they just recently talked about how web development jobs are growing rapidly:

“Knowing and being professional in at least some of the skills below to maximize your prospects for being employed.”

Odesk says jobs in PHP, AJAX, Javascript, XML, MySQL, CSS and Graphic Design are all growing.

According to their information, PHP related jobs are growing the fastest

PHP Job Growth ChartFrom their own blog:

“PHP is by far the most in-demand web development programming language right now. As you can see from the graph, it has enjoyed a steady climb from November 2007 leveling off in July 2008 at a spectacular 1400 jobs posted. The demand for PHP development work has tripled over the period of a mere 9 months.”

You can read the whole article here:

http://www.odesk.com/blog/2008/12/stay-employed-web-developer-skills-in-most-demand-php-ajax-mysql/

Of course, here at EH Design, we specialize in exactly these areas – PHP, mySQL, CSS, Javascript, and more.  We are a Fort Wayne based Web Design firm that specializes in web development.  CONTACT US if you would like to talk!

WordPress 2.7, here we go

Posted by Eric on December 16, 2008  |   No Comments »

I just updated my Content Management System to WordPress 2.7.

For those of you who haven’t been following the news, WP 2.7 is a pretty significant update to WordPress.  A bunch of things have been moved around.

Here’s a few initial thoughts:

Plugins:

- Oz Admin Drop Down – one of my favorite back-end plugins is no longer needed – as a matter of fact, it breaks the admin pages.  So you need to delete it, deactivate it, etc.  Otherwise, you won’t be able to see the menu on the left.

-  Custom Admin Branding – no longer works – well, it works, but not as nice.  WP changed the look of the log-in screen so my custom made log in no longer works.  That’s not a big deal for me, but can’t wait to get this fixed for other clients.  Being able to put in a custom Branded log in screen is a big deal.

Back End Menu:

- I love having the menu on the left hand side.  I love being able to shrink the menu to just the icons – giving me more space for writing and other things.  In short it is a big deal.

- The dashboard is now actually a useful page.  Before it was nothing more than just a waste.  Now, I’m looking forward to seeing it in action a little more.  Things like quickPress intrigue me.

OK, that’s it for now.  I’ll have more thoughts later as I work through everything.

Twitter for Business?

Posted by Eric on November 25, 2008  |   No Comments »

I’ve been spending more and more time using Twitter lately (http://www.twitter.com/ehdesign).  But, what I’ve been trying to figure out is how to make twitter into a truly useful, business application.  In other words – something other than just a time waster.

To that end, I just listened to a webinar from Sarah Milstein about Twitter fro business - http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/e/1162.  The webinar happened back on November 13, so it’s just a YouTube video, but it’s worth your time (even though it is about 60 minutes).

Here’s a short overview of some of the thoughts in the webinar:

1.  use search.twitter.com - great way to search for all tweets about a particular subject – very useful.  Didn’t know that it existed.  But, I do now, and I like it.  Great way to find information about your brand, competitors, company, etc.

2.  use twitter for customer service – we all know Comcast customer service sucks (even Comcast knows it).  So Frank Eliason saw Comcast being railed on in twitter – everyone complaining.  So, he made an account and started talking back.  Has 18,000 tweets – most of them are “@” tweets – meaning he’s talking to people.  Wow.  Almost makes me want to use comcast….

3.  Be open and authentic – if you are a company be sure to put a real name behind the business – post at least daily – twice a day if possible.

A bunch of decent questions at the end. 

Pretty good – I worked while I listened to it in the background.

Let me know if you have any other thoughts….