William Hames

PHP & JavaScript/TypeScript Developer

[William Hames @IAmWilliamHames]

@_devJNS Mostly an even split of PHP, JavaScript, and Python, with Rust slowly building momentum in my portfolio.

[William Hames @IAmWilliamHames]

@codewithdary Also, consider switching up your format.

If you're taking a top down approach(learn to drive), switch to a bottom up approach(learn how components work under the hood).

I recently posted a bottom up post on LinkedIn and it had 50k impressions vs my top down ones having 100ish.

[William Hames @IAmWilliamHames]

I wanted to use Lua for a project, but I couldn't get it working right on my Windows machine.

So, I built a web server in Rust that runs Lua handlers, middleware, and response hooks so I could test my idea.

The logic is Lua.
The engine is Rust.

[William Hames @IAmWilliamHames]

Just my personal take, but the only people I see struggling are affiliate marketers that, in my opinion, did abuse Google for traffic.

Sites like travel sites for example, using programmatic SEO to scale their content and the number of cities they have pages for, but then not offering anything of value or anything niche about that specific city. I'm really happy to see those kind of sites die off.

[William Hames @IAmWilliamHames]

There is nothing wrong with adding affiliate links to your content, but when you're building pages solely for affiliate links, then it's just SPAM.

[William Hames @IAmWilliamHames]

Just build, build, and build.

Start with the basics of HTML, but don't spend to much time here.

With CSS, you can build mobile responsive UIs using either Flex or Grid (or both). Pick one and master it. This is really where you want to spend most of your time.

Keep building until you are capable of producing mobile responsive designs in a reasonable amount of time.

Next up is to learn Git, and to start looking at your cloud options for hosting. Since you're not building any backend, I'd look for a provider that provides serverless form handling, like Netlify.

With deployment setup, now you might want to start producing component libraries and design systems you can use to speed up production on future projects.

Once all that is up running, checkout email, and build out a nice portfolio of email designs. You can integrate many cloud hosts like Netlify with many email services.

With all this, you'd be producing mobile responsive HTML/CSS web pages and email designs, versioning with Git, deploying live sites to production with Netlify, handling form submissions, and running an email campaign.

[William Hames @IAmWilliamHames]

I get you're upset, and I'm sorry your business took a hit, but I have to be honest, Travel Lemming is exactly the type of site I use AI to avoid visiting.

There are many articles on your site that are very generic, do not offer any niche/insider experience/advice on the specific location, and clearly exist solely as part of a programmatic SEO campaign to promote monetized pages.

Looking at locations I'm very familiar with, I see articles promoting your affiliates rather than being helpful.

And it seems like every link I click is just taking me to some product review page, and that was penalized way back in 2021.

Your site took a hit because you prioritized monetized pages over actually being helpful.

Update your tactics and get back to producing helpful content. Add affiliate links where you can rather than building pages solely for affiliate links, and you'll be back in business in no time.

[William Hames @IAmWilliamHames]

Well, there are 3 meters, so it's probably an apartment building. Dude probably threw a breaker and couldn't find the breaker box inside, so came outside to investigate.

The breaker box he needs is probably just hidden behind some clothes in a closet or behind the bathroom door or something.

[William Hames @IAmWilliamHames]

I'd say Express.js but that's only because it's the only one on this list that I've used on real projects lol

Flask is cool and I like to use it when building web apps on top of goofy Ollama agents that I build.

Django feels a bit bulky, but this is probably just because I don't have much experience with it.

I've never written a line of Java and don't know anything about Spring.

[William Hames @IAmWilliamHames]

I'd recommend choosing one, flex or grid, and sticking with it until you can build mobile responsive UIs.

Learning both is obviously very useful, but you should start with just one.

If you're into JavaScript, building a bunch of custom web components is a great way to test and iterate on smaller page sections.

Once you have a bunch of custom components, you can use them to build, test, and iterate on page designs quickly.

It's really fun once you get going and have a library of components and pages built up.

[William Hames @IAmWilliamHames]

@mitchellh There was a similar `glass effect` feature on Windows machines a long time ago that did negatively impact performance.

Maybe everybody is just speaking from muscle memory.

[William Hames @IAmWilliamHames]

What works for me:

1. Briefly introduce myself.
2. Explain why I'm the best fit for their problem.
3. Provide a timeline and briefly scope the work.
4. Offer potential addons/upgrades/upsells.
5. Provide proof/links to past work.
6. Demonstrate expertise by giving free advice/covering issues they should expect to come up.
7. Wrap up with a CTA that encourages them to contact me soon than later.

For the CTA I just say something like, "I'm able to start work immediately as of right now, but I am currently sending out proposals so that will change very soon."

I do use checkmark and bullet point emojis for better formatting, but that's it.

Stat wise is horrible for me, so take all this with a grain of salt.

I've sent 390 proposals and won 15 contracts. I've had probably double that reach out to me, but turned down their project because they were shopping for prices, not solutions.

[William Hames @IAmWilliamHames]

@itsoksmit For deer, lamb, and pig meat. At least that is what is in my freezer anyways

[William Hames @IAmWilliamHames]

I see this a lot with people who confuse fullstack with backend work.

Take CodeIgniter for example, a backend PHP framework that is marketed as a fullstack framework.

The problem seems to be that anytime anyone is building HTML/CSS views for their backend, they simply consider it a fullstack application.

For me personally, fullstack means having sperate applications for server and client. If both your backend and your views live in the same framework, I would consider that a backend application with built-in views.

How do you define a fullstack application?

[William Hames @IAmWilliamHames]

@EversonTheDev @mckrueg Funny story, I install Rust on a Windows machine and it solved an issue I was having with Python and Nvidia drivers. Not sure what happened, but just accepted that the Rust team is uber intelligent and capable of solving problems I didn't even know I had lol

[William Hames @IAmWilliamHames]

@EversonTheDev Nice, glad to hear everything is working out.

[William Hames @IAmWilliamHames]

@EversonTheDev That's good. Are you using WSL?

I don't have any real experience with it, but have heard good things about it.

[William Hames @IAmWilliamHames]

@EversonTheDev Ah I see. I'm a backend developer so that makes sense why I would struggle with Windows.