Edwin Fernandez

I am starting up in this freelance game myself... My experience so far has been similar, flaky clients. My first was an unpaid gig for a local law firm. I literally spent months doing this huge site redo for her, about 90% of the site is done, she was giving me feedback and was "yes-ing" everything I suggested. When it came down to finalizing the design decisions she stopped responding to my emails and calls. The second client I've been waiting for feedback and content for months now. These experiences sort of killed my momentum and very demoralizing wasting all this time, I learned a lot I suppose so not 100% waste. I'm going to keep at, you should too, Stef said it'd be rough at first.

If it does not get overturned at least there is the promise of 5G. If blockchain tech creates a new distributed internet, we won't need centralized ISPs, is this accurate?

I recently landed my first unpaid client, started working on their website… Yesterday, this client referred me to another client, who is going to pay, while I am still not finished with the first site. I have feelings of being in way "over my head", with a full time job, not new to programming but new to the web stack, etc., but I am learning as I go. I completed your foundation courses recently... HTML Template or From Scratch In order to save time I decided I did not want to start these sites from scratch so I chose an HTML5 template. At times I feel like it is getting in the way of what I want to do, because I don't know the template very well. For example, I modify an element and it misaligns an element next to it, its made me regret going with a HTML template. Couldn't get the header to look the way I wanted so I was forced to cut out the existing header and make my own using flex box. Is this typical of what you hear from developers using HTML templates? Is it a bad idea to learn a specific template well or should I be starting from scratch on my next gig, too late for this one…What do the pros do? SEO Considerations When Redesigning Websites Lastly, SEO. The client with an existing website came to me a few days ago really concerned over losing their current organic search rankings. Its really stressing me out because the firm makes a lot of money from it according to them. I want to keep or improve their rankings. I read I have to keep the site structure in tact, keep all of the pages, and keywords. Update the robots.txt file, is there other things I need to do so I don't mess up their rankings? Thanks, Edwin

Hi all, Is it okay to use the PHP validation code from the course "Form Validation with PHP & JavaScript", specifically the contact.php page to validate and send an email in production code, for a client website? Anything else I need to add to make sure the client doesn't get hacked or spoofing emails? Do I need something else like: filter_var($_POST['email'], FILTER_SANITIZE_EMAIL); and filter_var($_POST['name'], FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING); Are these necessary or is the code from the course safe enough? I guess I am just looking for best practices for form validation with security in mind. Thanks in advance for any help! —Edwin