Tips for Customizing Scripts

Today is a great day! After about 11 months I finally got my 1st client to cough up some payment and launched their shopping site. I did it as an experiment to turn a non-performing home page into a complete shopping site with cart. Here is the site: Venus Accessories selling bangles and jewellery. The appearance is based on their original site but a cubecart shopping script has been integrated into it.

After this long tortuous journey I have some tips about customizing scripts for clients. Maybe you do too? If so please share!

1. Avoid changing anything in the core code of the script - so when you install updates to the script, you don't have to edit the update.
2. Don't bother with script updates until the end when you mop them all up in one go i.e. security fixes.
3. Keep a log of all the changes you make and why i.e. file name, line number and before and after code.
4. Keep the work-in-progress site on your own hosting until the client pays. Only then transfer files to their hosting.
5. Keep backups of their old site and your new version.
6. Use the language file to implement client-requested links in place of words. You may need to escape double quotes in the href code.
7. If possible, give them limited admin privilages so they can't easily mess things up.
8. Backup the database to your computer as an SQL file so it's easy to manually repair/transfer the database.
9. Get the client to approve a standard script demo and list all their required cosmetic and functional changes before drafting a contract.
10. Get the client to write any copy such as privacy policy themselves.
11. Supply them the finished site in a maintenance mode so they are responsible for the official launch to the world.

As I mentioned, this was mainly a learning experience for me so if I did it again I would need a robust contract and would propably need to charge more than most small timers would want to pay. So I will probably stick to marketing my own products and affiliations rather than seeking clients.

Anyway, please provide your own tips based on your experiences with clients .....