Hi everyone,
Already 5 years have passed since I founded my company. And I must say those years passed in the blink of an eye.
I’ve never enjoyed my work as much as in these past years. Even if at times things were hectic and I worked crazy hours. I’ll never start working for a boss again (if I can help it)!
My conclusion after my first half-a-decade: If you think you’re good at something (even if it is outside of your current field of work), strongly consider becoming self-employed. It’ll take you a year or two to get up and running, but if you’re an independent kind of person you’ll love the “being in control” feeling it will give you. Very rewarding.
I felt a 5 year anniversary needed more than just posting about it here. My website hadn’t been redone in the same amount of time (except maybe for some bells ‘n whistles) and I had already thought I might give this new-fangled Microsoft Expression Web (EW) a whirl.
So I downloaded and installed the thing and imported my current Frontpage web into EW. Sheesh, what a huge difference in UI. EW seems much more aimed at the web developer than at the casual let-me-build-me-a-site-for-my-club kind of user.
Luckily I bumped into a course which seemed tailored at what I was about to do:
Migrating from FrontPage to Expression Web
I subscribed, followed the course and here is the result:
Kudos to Tina Clarke and Patricia Geary (both Frontpage MVP’s) who were the course writers and -instructors. Excellent job.
So, have a look at my new site and let me know what you think.
Regards,
Jan Karel Pieterse
JKP Application Development Services
Nice job! I like the new menus.
And I didn’t even have to update my bookmark to your downloads page – it still works.
Hi JK
Looks great the site
>Already 5 years have past since I founded my company
Congrats
Hi Egon,
I spent a lot of time ensuring pages I moved or renamed would have a redirect. E.g. I had to rename all .htm pages to .asp because of the new navigation.
JK –
Nice, the new format is crisp and clean.
Five years, I’m catching up to you, buddy. (Hold still!)
I find the body font a little hard to read. What font is that?
Trebuchet ms, been my font for 5 yrs…
Congratulations, Jan Karel! I’ve certainly appreciated your utilities and your input on questions I’ve had.
Yeah, I’ve just never said anything before. :)
Anyway, congrats on the anniversary. I’m not a third-party utilities guy, but I remember having a big project dealing with named ranges. I begrudgingly installed Name Manager. And of course, I’ve never uninstalled it. It has to be one of the most useful general purpose Excel utilities ever written.
Matthew: Thanks.
Dick: Thanks. I’m no 3rd party guy either, I usually roll my own stuff. I agree on NM, I couldn’t do any decently sized project without it.
Congratulations on the anniversary and website update! It looks good and is very easy to navigate.
And I agree with Dick on the usefulness of Name Manager — thanks for that.
Any idea how much time you spent on the conversion? I’m using an old version of Dreamweaver for my site, but not sure the benefits of an upgrade would be worth the time investment.
Congratulations on the anniversary.
I’ve been independent for over 10 years now & it’s the greatest feeling.
Congrats on 5 years. I am only 1 year in. I like it but health care and unpredictable cash flow is tough. Tradeoffs, trade offs.
Debrah: Pfew, lots and lots of hours. Wild guess: 100? 200? I didn’t keep score.
The course greatly helped though. Which I guess doesn’t help you much given you’re coming from dreamweaver. Might be good to contact Tina or Pat and ask them how hard that might be. Dunno if they know though.
Congrats JKP, heres to the next five, I wounder what the pace of change will be like after 10 years?!
Congrats JKP. I agree with the essentiality of the Name Manager, and also find the RefTreeAnalyser to be very valuable when reviewing workbooks from other people. Thanks!
Ken: “unpredictable cash flow is tough” It was the same for me in the first 2 years. Got better after that.
Ross: Yeah, me too. Pace is fast as it is already.
Nicely done, JKP. The site is REALLY readable, and the layout is professional. Utilities are great too. I use NM EVERY day.
Thanks Alex.
Hi JKP,
Congrats with your anniversary. I like the new look of your website although the font came out rather big in FireFox. + fixed it. I noticed a few links aren’t working (yet). E.g. http://www.jkp-ads.com/Articles/DistributeMacro00NL.asp, try clicking the links.
Cheers,
Remco
Oi, never mind about those links. Seems to be a general issue. Working on the website? (11.50 AM GMT+1)
I do work on the site on and off. Should all work now.