SitePoint Blog

You're not a Lawyer or a Mechanic

The nature of the arrangement is more similar that not. Both do project based work as service professionals. And both have unforeseen variables that cannot be known at the time of estimating. Lawyers routinely deal with unforeseen political issue (ruling not going the way they expected) and mechanics routinely deal with unforeseen problems that are technical in nature (mechanical failure, that was not known until the heads where pulled off).

Software developers routinely deal with both natures of unforeseen variables in addition to the client adding work after the estimate. Which would be akin to a mechanic giving someone a quote and then when they are half way through the project the client saying well while you are in there go ahead and change out the pistons for forged steel ones, and then arguing because the client got charged for the parts and labor. In all three cases the client pays for the additional work not the service provider.

paying by the hour is a poor and dated way to do business

I differ on that opinion as well Sitepoint does too, almost all of the top talent in any development field works by the hour not by the project. Most know to not take the entrepreneurial risk of another company while engaging in a contract that limits their reward.

http://blogs.sitepoint.com/2010/09/14/flat-rate-pricing-vs-hourly-billing/

You're selling a software solution to a client, so you should charge for that solution

Right and if I am…

SSL adds latency, because you're setting up an encrypted connection. Google hates slowing down users, and we don't want to slow down every user unless it's a clear win. That's one reason.

When Google switched to AJAX-based search, that temporarily stopped sending referrers, and lots of people screamed bloody murder. For example, http://getclicky.com/blog/150/googles-new-ajax-powered-search-results-breaks-search-keyword-tracking-for-everyone said "So what can we do about it? If you run a blog, write about this. Submit this story or your own story to large tech blogs like TechCrunch, CenterNetworks, ReadWriteWeb, GigaOm, etc - no large site has written about this yet, and one of them needs to. ... Do anything you can to spread the word and let Google know that this is not acceptable."

Or see http://www.seobook.com/Ad-Networks-Partners-Hoarding-Publisher-Data-For-Profit or http://econsultancy.com/us/blog/3240-google-ajax-bad-news-for-third-party-analytics-providers or http://blogs.sitepoint.com/2009/02/04/google-update-breaks-third-party-analytics-tools/ . So we heard lots of complaints.

SSL as an option provides a nice choice for people who care about these issues and don't mind taking a tiny hit in latency.

I'm by no means an expert, though I've worked with experts and picked up some stuff from them. The rest I learned from Google and various forums:

http://www.google.com/search?query=on-page+seo

http://blogs.sitepoint.com/ultimate-seo-checklist/

http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/search-engine-optimization-3/faq-search-engine-optimization-182915.html

Basically, SEO comes down to having awesome content, identifying it properly on your site, and getting other people to link to it.

What is proposed in the OP's link is NOT impossible as the various detractors in this thread would have you believe, but it IS a lot of work. The tech stuff is easy, consistently building out your backlinks is the hardest part. If you're lucky, they'll start to grow on their own and you have 100% passive income.

optipng/pngout/pnggauntlet are "only" png optimizers

this site gracefully degrades a png with 24bit alpha transparency to 8bit alpha so you don't have to settle for a gif.

I suspect they are using pngnq http://pornel.net/pngnq and pngquant http://pornel.net/pngquant

Some background here:

http://blogs.sitepoint.com/png8-the-clear-winner/

http://www.ethanandjamie.com/blog/81-png8-transparency-without-fireworks

That site is great because it's so easy, they did some very impressive drag-and-drop code and it makes very high quality output that is as good as Fireworks.