Freelancers need to occosionally say no.

As a freelance web developer I often find myself wrestling with morals.

Should I work for a client with obvious or even questionable morals ?

Should I help a client promote a product or service I wouldn't recommend to a friend ?

Should I provide what the client is asking for even though I know it will detract from their web site's search engine performance ?

While it's been hard at times, I am getting better at firmly yet respectfully declining jobs. Of course I still need to eat, but luckily the majority of clients I've worked for in the past call on me again when the need arises.

It wasn't always like this. When I first started freelancing I'd take work where I could get it and learned the lessons the hard way. Sometimes you just have to say no thank you.

Think about it. If a potential client has you write something that essentially helps him commit fraud or theft you are just as guilty as they are. It really is worth it in the long run to avoid those types of jobs.

I've also had to reluctantly pass on work promoting products or services I simply see no market for. I'll have no part in assisting a would be entrepreneur on their way to bankruptcy.

Finally there is the inflexible client insisting they have feature XYZ added, rejecting advice that feature XYZ won't help them, or might even ruin their business (like get them removed from the Google index) When a potential client is this inflexible I take that as my cue to gracefully decline. Several times they've looked me up again, essentially saying I was right, this didn't help,
and can I help them remove it.

Of course it's hard to be picky as a freelancer just starting out, but over time I hope everyone will learn from my experiences.

When considering a project, ask yourself whether it actually benefits the client as well as their respective clients. If the answer is no suggest alternatives. If the client won't budge on their specifications, it's probably best to move on.

Top 5 most common PHP blunders

PHP is a very flexible language. Flexible enough that someone with no programming experience at all can create useful programs, meanwhile appeasing the needs of the formally trained OOP programmers.

Coders from either of these two groups have certainly written code that generated an error. Sometimes I just wish that either the errors were more helpful, or simply spat out a number, so you could look it up in the "this number means this error" table.

I can see it now.. "Parse error #63" and of course referencing my list of error codes that doubles as a black light poster I see error #63 reads "you left the stupid semi-colon off the end of the line again !" Some things just never change.

Anyway, here are in my opinion the most common errors PHP coders encounter, and hopefully some hints on what might be the cause.

• #5
  
  Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at ...
  

  If you have a PHP script that tries to use the header function, or set cookies, you might have encountered this error. It's one of the few where the error message is actually helpful. The most common cause is an extra space or line either at the top or bottom of the PHP script, outside the <?php & ?> tags. Reading the error, it actually tells what file, and where the problem was caused.
  

  
  
  
• #4
  
  Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_STRING in ...
  

  Probably one of the most common errors, and also the least helpful. The most likely cause is the line above the one indicated in the error message is missing the semi-colon at the end.





• #3
  
  Parse error: syntax error, unexpected $end in ...
  

  This error can be a nightmare to correct and almost always has to do with a missing closing curly bracket } You can avoid these types of problems by formatting your code as you go, lining up the opening and closing curly brackets like this...

  if ($loggedin == 1) {
  echo 'Hello '. $username;
  } 
  else 
  {
  echo 'Hello guest';
  }
  

  
  You will ALWAYS have the same number of opening and closing curly brackets. Another possible cause is mismatched double and single quotes in an echo or print statment, eg; echo "Oh no another error!';





• #2
  
  Parse error: syntax error, unexpected 'X', expecting ',' or ';'

  Another not entirely helpful error, but usually easily fixed. Check for attempts to print/echo strings that are not surrounded by single or double quotes, like ...
  echo Oh no another error!; This error might also be the result of a missing semi-colon at the end of the preceding line.





• #1
  
  Invalid argument supplied for XYZ ....

  Certainly a candidate for least helpful, this error arises when your try to do something to an array or object that doesn't exist. The actual cause can vary from simple typoes to a failure to create and populate the array/object.