Personal Projects

In my opinion for a developer there are few things that are more important than working on personal projects. Personal projects typically do not matter whether they succeed or fail. They give you an opportunity to go in your own direction and perhaps most importantly, experiment with new technologies you would otherwise not use.

While many of my personal projects never see the light of day, – This is something I would like to rectify – I certainly enjoy doing them. Where client work can be stressful and limiting, personal projects can be liberating and help a developer re-find some lost inspiration.

My Personal Design Projects

I have 2 examples. This website and WordPress SOS. I own both, to be honest, for the better part of a year both sites have been somewhat inactive. I decided both needed a face lift. I located 2 old designs which I made years ago and had a race against the clock to convert them into WordPress templates. I set aside an hour for each website.

This website was sliced and erected in just under an hour. It isn’t perfect, comments especially look acceptable but under styled. I am sure that some browsers may look a little rough. This all said it was fun. I wrote the vast majority of the stylesheet without testing until the very end. Then, with minutes left, I touched up the numerous little issues. I even had a few people watching me do it which was interesting and they gave feedback throughout. A client would have never OKed this work, especially not on a live website. However, this is a personal project and I wanted to see what I could do.

WordPress SOS did not fair as well, I ran into some issues. (I lost the admin account) and the result was that the fresh install ate up about 25 minutes of my design time. The result of this is a header! More is styled but it certainly isn’t ready to be displayed. If I did this with a client site I am fairly sure I would get a slap. As a personal project though it is an interesting experiment.

My Development Project

I am a CodeIgniter developer, I have been for years. I know it pretty much inside out and I enjoy using it. However, I used it for so long that the boring parts of coding that it protects me from have become a little interesting. Things like database abstraction layers, validation classes which I haven’t written in ages interest me. As a result I have started messing around with my own framework. Will it ever be released? NO! Will it ever be used on a live site? I REALLY DOUBT IT!

However, while it is in mind a dead end project, it is also making me a better developer. I am looking more into the architecture of applications. – Something that I haven’t done in a while – I am playing around with namespaces and inheritance and seeing what I come up with. Client work would never let me do this. However, in my own time, its interesting and somewhat freeing. What I learn in this project will no doubt be used in part on future projects.

My Client Management Application

Something that I have been wanting to have for a while now is a client management application. The features of the application are as follows.

• Clients can register
• Clients can view on going projects
• Clients can request a quote
• Clients can view milestones
• Clients can download finished work at any time
• Clients have a standarized way of messaging me

While I know that there are applications around that can do this and much more. I have been unconvinced or disappointed with either what they do or the way they do it. I plan to come up with something and either release it as open source or charge a nominal one off fee.

As for what I will use to build it. I keep jumping around. First of all I was going to use CodeIgniter, then I was going to use the framework mentioned above. Now I think I will use Solar. While it is still in alpha it looks very interesting and I always enjoy playing with new tools. I will also be writing about my experience’s with Solar as I go so stayed tuned.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 8th, 2009 at 12:45 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.