Ethics

Ethics are important. However, this is not a question of ethics. It stopped being a question of ethics when the client after repeated reminders and unanswered inquires decided to postpone payment beyond the due date. Regardless of the circumstances, this is an unethical thing to do.

One may say that the client is excused if they are having financial problems. If the client would have actually taken the forum poster’s calls or replied to his repeated inquires, it would have been an entirely different story. Financial problems are no excuse to skip payments but if the client communicates her concerns, a contracted professional may decide to cut her some slack. Of course, sympathy is impossible without communication.

Patience

How far overdue is the invoice and what are the terms? How much do you need the money? This is not only a question regarding your client’s situation but also yours. If you have a financial buffer for these situations, which you should have but which is not always realistic, you may be able to afford being patient for a while longer.

On the other hand, if you’re in desperate need of this payment to be able to eat and pay the rent, there is no question about it.—you obviously need to take care of it immediately. Don’t use up your credit or borrow money because your client is an ass.

Another thing you may want to consider is the terms of the invoice. If you’re using NET15 payment, the client may have been expecting twice as much time to pay the invoice. Again, if the client communicates her concerns we can surely come to an acceptable agreement. Due to the frequency of overdue payments in this industry, NET15 could be a smart move as long as the client is aware of the terms from the start and accepts them. 30 days however is more common and should be fine with any client, in an ideal world.

Inform

This leads us to the matter of keeping everyone informed. It’s your job to make sure that the client knows when the project is delivered as well as when the invoice is both sent and due, preferably far in advance. Agree on the payment terms before both of you sign any contract or you risk conflicts once the project is completed.

Charging an up-front fee can be a good thing for keeping the client dedicated and getting her to listen and understand the terms of the payments. You’ll also be able to handle expenses during the project and be more certain that the client actually has money to pay for your work. For up-front payments to be useful, they should in my opinion be applied to larger projects. For minor work it’s just ridiculous and you risk appearing like a jerk.

Once you send the invoice, make sure the client gets it and that they are informed about the due date. As the due date is closing in, send out reminders. On or around the due date, send another reminder and a personal message asking if there’s any way you can help with the payment. Always remain polite and professional.

FreshBooks and Billings are great invoicing applications that I recommend. Freshbooks for example will automatically send out reminders after a certain amount of days which you can configure to your liking.

Future

Consider your future with this client. A core part of my business concept is to nurture valuable and friendly long-term relationships with my clients. Even though you have done everything right and you are entitled to the payment (two weeks ago), some ways of dealing with this issue could piss off your client and potentially ruin any chances for repeat-business.

Then again, do you really want to continue working with a client that doesn’t pay on time or even reply to your inquires about the payment? This client is practically waving a huge red flag right in your face. However, use your intuition. If you feel that this is a one-time occurrence, make it work. If you have a bad feeling about the client, grab your money and get out.

Contract

You have a solid contract, right? Having a contract is a necessity. Keeping this paragraph relevant to the situation, the contract should include who owns the rights to the work, when those rights are transferred, terms of payment, what happens upon overdue payment, any late fees you may charge, and terms of cancellation and termination of the contract.

Of course, your quotation or proposal should also state clearly the scope of the project so that everyone is aware of what the term “complete” means. Being ridiculously detailed can save you a lot of trouble during the project since people tend to misunderstand the information in this kind of paperwork. If you need to use very technical terms, also explain them practically.

What to do

The original question was if you could take the website down. If you have a contract stating that the work belongs to you until payment has been received, you can definitely take it down. If you are hosting the site yourself then of course you can take it down. Make sure you give plenty of notice before doing so though.

If you’re hosting the site yourself and want to receive the payment fast, you can replace the website with a notice that the “account has been suspended due to overdue payments” or similar. Turn on your evil asshole mode and be creative. Don’t do this if you value your relationship with the client.

Have patience—don’t immediately take the website down even though you want to. Remain professional, positive and courteous at all times. As mentioned, inform the client that the invoice is overdue and ask if there is anything you can do to help. This makes you a service-minded professional rather than some jerk screaming “SHOW ME THE MONEY”.

As a user on the forums states, you can offer a down-payment option to relieve some of the pressure that is keeping the client from paying. The same user recommends that the agreement includes that if the down-payments become overdue, the whole remaining amount will be charged immediately.

If you after repeated phone calls and emails cannot get an answer about what’s going on and the invoice is way overdue, you’ll need to take action. While it may seem harsh, send the client a new invoice with a late fee applied and inform her that you would rather avoid taking legal action. It would perhaps be more subtle to take the website down, depending on how much that would interrupt the client’s business.

Conclusion

Don’t be a pussy. Consider these things and if it seems like the rational choice, take the site down and stop delivering. Clients need to learn that due dates are set for a reason and ignoring them without notice is unacceptable. But remember to be polite and behave professionally and positively regardless of the situation.

First of all, if education is valuable or not is a stupid question. All education is valuable in one way or another—you learn. If you learn easier, quicker or more enjoyable than you would by working, however, is more interesting. I believe the question is far too subjective for us to answer. Only you can tell if going for an education in web development is worth your time.

The options

If you do decide that being a student suits you, what are the options for web design and development? While I do not plan to pursue an education myself, there’s a couple of schools I would consider if I did. Since I have not been looking for one, I’m not aware of any good English or American schools that offer education in this area. The ones I’m thinking about are both Swedish.

The one I’m most enthusiastic about is Berghs School of Communication. The web is a medium for communication and Berghs offer a few really interesting programs which prepares students for real-life work. They also connect students with well-known Swedish businesses which can give them a kick in the right direction.

Both Interactive Communication, Marketing/strategic communication, Project Management and Art Direction all look like very interesting studies. Since they are one year programs, they would not be a huge interruption to my work.

Hyper Island would be my second choice—their website is in English in case you’d like to have a look. From what I’ve heard, they are very digital/interactive and offer programs such as Interactive Art Director, Application Designer, and E-commerce Manager. I believe both developers and designers could benefit greatly from spending some time at this institution.

Asking why

But we need to ask ourselves how we really enjoy learning. Personally, I’m more of a learning-by-doing kind of developer. The reason why I started my own business is that I want to pursue work that challenges me daily—work that I constantly learn from. A lot of people prefer this way of learning but there’s also many who really feel that the support of an institution like Hyper Island or Berghs is invaluable.

While I can’t say for sure, it seems as if these private institutions are very up-to-date with the industry and the students are very happy with the education they receive. It shouldn’t be very difficult to adapt each semester after the changes in technology and methodology, should it?

There are bad apples in the basket as well, of course. Some beginner web design courses teach methods of development and design that are far outdated or just plain bad practice. When I was studying business and marketing in Santa Monica, I selected a course on web design as part of my general education. After the first lesson I confidently dropped out, as the room was filled with people who obviously had no intention of ever becoming professionals—the teacher being one of them.

Many, if not most, courses (often at “regular” institutions) are ridiculous. They teach for months something that can be learned from online material in a week or less if you are an ambitious and somewhat technical person. But as shown here, there are schools that provide excellent education even for experienced web professionals.

We need to remember that it’s not only about the technical aspects. Most of us could learn a lot from courses in project management, interactive/marketing communication or even traditional business and marketing courses. These are perhaps more subtle areas which are harder to “see” but which are highly relevant and valuable for anyone dealing with interactivity and the web.

Conslusion

From what I feel right now, I won’t be pursuing an education any time soon. However, the possibility is there and I believe we should all at least consider the option before disposing of the idea completely. Just because you’re doing web design, a subject which is relatively new and fast-paced, doesn’t mean education is worthless.

So far I haven’t mentioned what others are so often discussing; is it beneficial to your resume and portfolio to be backed up by these educations. I will not discuss this since the question can be answered by applying a little bit of common sense. Of course it is a good thing to have education in your CV—some people will shred it immediately if you don’t. But work experience is also very valuable.

Stop making important decisions based on what “looks best”. Think about what you right now want to do, and what would be most useful for you. In the end, what matters most is the work you do. Great clients and dream jobs are the result of hard work, passion, will-power and most of all, repeatedly achieving fantastic results. The choice between doing that by applying knowledge from education or from previous work is entirely up to you.

Moving the folders

If you don’t want to move the entire Magento folder to its cozy new home, make sure to move the media, app/etc and your theme folders. Remember, there is both a skin folder and a design folder for your theme and you most definitely need them both.

MySQL database dump

Make a database dump of the old database and import it to the new location. In the core_config_data table, change the values of web/secure/base_url and web/unsecure/base_url to reflect any changes in the domain. If you’re moving Magento into a subdirectory, also change the RewriteBase in the root folder .htaccess file.

The settings in your app/etc/local.xml file should be changed to let Magento connect to your new database.

Updating the paths

Clear the var/cache folder when moving the site to make sure no cache is left from the old one. Remove or rename the downloader/pearlib/pear.ini file to make sure the Magento Connect downloader upgrades the path it uses. Forget this and you’ll be scratching your head the next time you’re installing an extension.

The right permissions

Simply make the app/etc, var and media folders writeable by the server.

Updating Magento

Why not update Magento to the latest version while you are still poking around? You can use the Magento Connect downloader or if you prefer (or can’t access the site via a browser yet) you can run the following commands on your server:

./pear mage-setup .
./pear install magento-core/Mage_All_Latest

That should also do any required updates on the database. If you ever import a Magento 1.3 database to a Magento 1.4 installation, run the commands again to make sure the structure is correct.

Potential problem: Some images are not showing

You have transferred all the images to the new location and cleared the cache but only some of them show up when browsing the catalog on the front-end. This can occur when Magento can’t allocate enough RAM when loading the images. Increase the memory_limit in php.ini and restart the Apache service.

Potential problem: Products are missing

If some products are missing or the site seems different from the old one, reindex the catalog.

Potential problem: Prices always display excluding taxes

This can occur when upgrading to Magento 1.4. You’ve set the configuration to include taxes in all the prices but they still display without taxes on the front-end. What you need to do is to set the Origin on the Shipping Options page in the site configuration.

More resources

What I’ve mentioned here is only the bare basics of moving Magento to a new server. Once you hit a problem, that’s when things become a lot more interesting. While Google is your best friend, below is a list of a few of the resources I’ve personally found helpful.

Moving Magento To Another Server
I Actually Am Getting Orders Now on 1.4
Magento 1.4 Install Errors
Moving Magento […] (potential problems)
Issues With Moving Magento
Moving Magento Site From Development To Live