Freelancers live and die by the unofficial ‘Client is king’ rule. 99% of the time, it’s a good rule. It helps us keep a level head on our shoulders even when what we really want to do is slam down the phone, growl at them or tell them to take a hike.

(Image Source: FreelanceSwitch)

There are clients who make our freelancing lives difficult, jeopardizing our livelihood and endangering our freelance business – the reasons for which can vary from freelancer to freelancer and situation to situation.

In every situation, there are a few signs that tell you it’s time to let your client go. Get ready to walk away if your client:

1. Doesn’t pay on time

Let’s face it: for the sake of making a living, we’re willing to put up with a lot but the one things that we don’t want to be made to put up with though is late (or no) payment. We didn’t do all that organizing, scheduling and sheer hard work through sleepless nights just for the client to be late with their payments!

Work delivered on time deserves timely compensation.
Late payments are fine once or twice. Clients have issues and glitches too. We understand this and if they let us know in time, we usually don’t mind. But if a client makes a habit out of it then maybe it’s time to move on.

In cases where you can’t let the client go: politely let your client know you cannot invest your time and efforts in any of their work any more to give priority to other clients.

In addition to that, if late payments have become the norm, then a change in the contract terms might be in order too. Ask for at least 50% upfront payment before you start work. Milestone payments (50% upfront, 25% on delivering and 25% on project completion) work better to ensure that your client doesn’t bail on your livelihood.

2. Sends less work your way than before

A lot of times, clients stop sending as much work as they used to. It’s a common occurrence and completely understandable. But as a freelancer, you need to think about what’s best for your business. If a client is sending less work your way, you might want to think about alternative sources of work since you’re losing money just by waiting.

Think of it this way: will your business be better off if you work for a client who has more work to offer regularly? Or does it make more sense to stick with your current client and risk receiving less and less work from them?

In cases where you can’t let the client go: send the client an email asking about the reduced work load. Simply state that you’re asking in case the terms of the contract need to change. Be candid. Tell them the reduced work is affecting your business and you need to know what amount of workload to expect from them so you can plan accordingly.

3. Becomes increasingly demanding

Demanding clients can be good – if they force you to produce your best work. But if all the demands are about unreasonable deadlines, changes they’d like you to make after you’ve met every specification or scope creep, it might be time to let the client go.

(Image Source: 1stWebdesigner)

Unless you’ve got balls of steel or are the king/queen of tact, I’d suggest against telling the client that you’re letting them go because they’re unreasonably demanding. Just let them know that you won’t be able to meet a certain deadline or do the additional work and apologize. Refer someone else to them and walk away.

In cases where you can’t let the client go: negotiate. Whether its deadlines or a general demanding behaviour, find a way to state your case and negotiate.

4. Is disrespectful

As freelancers, we’re willing to put up with a lot. But if there’s one thing a freelancer should never put up with is disrespect. Not only does it blow a mental fuse, you lose all respect for the client.

Whether it’s the client telling you that his children could do the work better than you, using foul language, questioning your ethics or anything that you personally find offending and disrespectful, do not, under any circumstances put up with it. If you do, not only will your morale go down, you’ll lose confidence and your self-respect.

When letting a disrespectful client go, refrain from starting a flame war. Act professionally, cite personal/professional differences and just walk out.

In cases where you can’t let the client go: make it a point that they are being disrespectful and you will not put up with it. You’ll need to be a little sneaky and a lot cheeky for it. If the client claims his children can do better than you, suggest his kids showing you the ropes to get you on the right path. You get the drift.

5. Violates the terms of the contract

Violating the terms of your freelance contract is an offense but it probably won’t be serious enough to hire a lawyer to take it to court but it will be serious enough to make you consider letting the client go.

If a client can’t be trusted to stick to his words, there’s a high chance you’ll face problems in the future. It’s one of those signs where it really depends on what contract term is being violated. If you feel you’ve been wronged, then by all means let them go.

If you can’t let them go, insist on revising the terms of the contracts and adding a clause of your own to prevent something similar from happening in the future.

Related: 8 Contract Clauses You Should Never Freelance Without

6. Is high maintenance

High maintenance clients usually require a lot of hand holding or guiding. They expect you to explain every little detail, and submit detailed, emails or scheduled reports of your progress. If something needs to be emailed at 12 pm then that’s exactly when the email needs to go out otherwise the client gets angsty. A high maintenance client would want to communicate every day and may even call you after hours.

To be honest, such clients are rarely worth the hassle. Even if a freelancer has the time, he definitely doesn’t have the mental capacity to deal with such a high maintenance client. You may need to pop a couple of painkillers for the definite headache you’ll be getting every day just from talking to this client.

7. Is unprofessional

A lot of clients are very friendly with their freelancers. They talk informally and throw in a joke or two. But being friendly with your freelancer is one thing, being a chum who goes completely off topic or worse into gossip, is another.

It might feel easy to the these things pass but chances are high that the client will eventually say something or act in a way that you’ll find inappropriate or offensive. The fault is going to be yours for not correcting the behaviour when it started.

Unprofessional clients are unpredictable. You never know when they’ll turn on you or when they’ll expect a work-related favour at no extra charge. Get out of the relationship before it sours. Usually when a client doesn’t get the same chumminess from a freelancer they will back off. But if they don’t, a gentle reminder may be in order. Remember, tact is everything in cases like these.

Conclusion

If your client is showing any of these signs, it may be time to think about letting them go. The time and energy you spend on dealing with them will be better utilized in looking for new clients or concentrating more on your trouble-free clients. Have you ever let a client go? What was your reason?

Related posts:

1. 11 Signs Of Problematic Clients You’ll Meet in Freelancing
2. 9 Things You Should Know About Freelancing Full-time
3. Freelancers: Collecting Comprehensive Creative Brief from Your Client
4. Roadmap to Freelancing: Getting the Deal (Part 2)

cPanel is the leader and industry standard of standalone hosting platform nowadays. The main product WHM/cPanel has been used by most web-hosting providers due to its flexibility, and because it’s easy to manage,customizable and backed by great quality support.

Most of us who are involved in the web-hosting industry have heard of what it can do.If you are new to cPanel however, there are a few things that we would recommend that you do during the intial phase. Listed after the jump are 5 recommended initial setups for new cPanel users.

Recommended Reading: Web Hosting Consumer Guide: 9 Tips You Should Know

1. Get a Strong Password

Every user by default will get a username and password to login into the cPanel domain owner interface. The same login credential is applied to the default mysql database user, FTP account, email address and also system user login, which you can use to access the server remotely by using SSH (if the server administrator enables this feature).

Changing the cPanel login password is a critical first action. If someone is able to retrieve or guess your password, they will get all unwarranted privileges to the server, which is dangerous.

There are some cases where a valid user’s registered email account has been hacked into and taken over by a hacker. Inside the email Inbox was the login credential for his cPanel account. When the owner wanted to reset the password (which had been changed by the hacker), he had to contact the web hosting provider. The problem is he needed to use the registered email address for verification as the account owner; nothing can be done.

A good password practice should be applied to prevent this kind of problems. Some tips for password management best practice:

• Change your password frequently
• Avoid dictionary words
• Avoid familiar items like birth date, vehicle registration number or phone number
• Use a combination of letters, numbers and symbols
• Use more than 8 characters
• Do not ‘remember’ your password in the browser

2. Understand the server environment

Make sure you totally understand the server environment before use. Some key things which you need to know are the server operating system and architecture, kernel version, applications (cpanel,apache, php, mysql, perl) version, IP address and hosting package limitation. You can get this information on the main page which usually appears on the sidebar of the cPanel interface. A good hosting server should be run on the updated version of the kernel and applications under 64 bit architecture (x86_64).

The cPanel user should also check the cPanel Service Status (cPanel > Stats > Service Status). You can know how many CPUs are running on the server, total memory usage and also disk space status from here. Inspecting this feature will give you more information about the server’s real-time condition. Make sure all services are up and running as expected. A stable server should run at below 80% of disk usage and below 10% of swap; the server load average should be below 2 times the total number of CPU.

3. Check permission (File and directory)

cPanel users by default will get a home directory under /home/{username}. All files and directories under the user’s home directory should be run on respective permission and ownership. The most critical directory which should be run under correct permission and ownership is public_html. But, before we proceed with the checking, you should know how PHP is handled inside the cPanel server.

Create a phpinfo page under public_html. Access the page via browser and check the value of "Server API".

If the value is CGI/FastCGI, then the PHP handler is either suPHP, FastCGI or CGI. Most web hosting provider will use suPHP instead due to security verification and as it is the default handler for cPanel servers. Under this handler, PHP executed as a different process alongside Apache. All file permission should be run under 644, and directory permission, under 755. Permissions higher than this will result in "Internal Server Error" whenever the PHP script is executed.

If the value is Apache 2.0 Handler, then you are running PHP under DSO. This handler does not require strict file permission and ownership because the PHP file is totally being handled by Apache. But it is still recommended to have same permission practice as advised in CGI/FastCGI method.

You can use cPanel File Manager, FTP client or SSH access (if allowed) to fix the permission and ownership issue. Do not forget to delete the phpinfo page after the information that you want is retrieved.

4. Add some protection

Even though protection and security is totally under server administrator responsibility, cPanel users can take advantage of cPanel flexibilities in adding some protection to your website, domain and cPanel account.

Make sure Spam Assassin (cPanel > Mail > Spam Assassin) is enabled. Some web hosting provider do not enable this feature by default because newly registered domain usually do not receive many spam emails. Discard all unrouted email under Default Address (cPanel > Mail > Default Address) with error to sender at SMTP time. Do not use the "blackhole" or "forward to email address" options unless you really need it. Hackers can take advantage of these 2 features to create a DOS attack for the SMTP service.

Disable Frontpage if it is not used (cPanel > Advanced > FrontPage Extensions). Microsoft has discontinued FrontPage extension support for the Unix platform and recently many web hosting provider had observed severe intrusion attempts via FrontPage vulnerabilities.

Check the PHP disabled_function using phpinfo page. Make sure all critical functions have been disabled inside the server. If not, create a php.ini file under public_html and add the following line:

disable_functions=exec, passthru, shell_exec,system, proc_open, popen, curl_exec, curl_m ulti_exec, parse_ini_file, show_source

Enable hotlink protection (cPanel > Security > Hotlink Protection) to prevent others from stealing your bandwidth. People might just link your image to their websites, making it part of their contents. Only allow your websites URL to access static contents like .jpg, .jpeg, .gif, .png and .bmp.

5. Notification and Monitoring

It is required to put a secondary email to receive notification by cPanel. By default, the user’s registered email will always be the primary contact. Under Update Contact Info (cPanel > Preferences > Update Contact Info), add a secondary email as a backup in case the primary email is unreachable.

Subscribe to any monitoring tools available online to monitor your website and domain availability. Even though some web hosting providers offer this service for free, you might need to have another external monitoring point for more accurate results. Make sure you configure the monitoring system to trigger and send alerts to your email so you will receive notifications immediately. Sites like http://www.monitor.us and http://www.siteuptime.com offer free monitoring tools based on geographical locations.

Conclusion

This article is not intended for new cPanel users only. It also serves as a reminder for those who already familiar with cPanel as well. By practising these best configuration practices it may help you to become a better and more responsible website/domain owner.

No related posts.

Wishing someone a happy birthday on Facebook nowadays has become so common. But have you ever missed out on wishing that one, special person because you did not access Facebook that day, of all days?

In Facebook you have notification settings that help remind you of your friends’ birthdays but it will be easier to keep track of all the dates if you could add all your Facebook friends’ birthday to your iPhone calendar. Doing it one friend at a time is a hassle.

Well, you do not have to worry about that anymore. In a few simple steps, I am going to tell you how to have your Facebook friends’ birthdays – and even your Facebook events – synced to your iPhone calendar.

Once you get this set up, you will never miss out on a birthday ever again. So let’s begin.

Read Also: How To Schedule Facebook Birthday Greetings In Advance

Export the Facebook Calendar

First, you need to export your unique Facebook calendar information:

1. Log in to your Facebook account and click on Events located on the left navigation panel.

   

2. Look for the gear located on the right side of the page and click on Export.

   

3. A small popup will be on screen with two links, one for Birthdays and another for Events. Copy the link for your friends’ birthday.

   Right-click then select Copy link address if you use Google Chrome; Copy link location for Mozilla Firefox; or Copy shortcut for Internet Explorer.

   

Adding Facebook’s Calendar to Your iPhone

If you use iMessage on your Mac, send the link over to your iPhone. Tap that link on your iPhone. Hit Subscribe. And you’re done.

If you can’t use iMessage, email the links to yourself. Open the email on your iPhone, copy the link then follow the following steps:

1. On your iPhone, tap on Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars > Add Account.

   

2. Tap on Other and under the ‘Calendars’ section, tap on Add Subscribed Calendar.

   

3. Paste the link into the Server box, and then tap Next. Then, tap Save.

Repeat the steps above if you want to add the Events calendar using the Events link instead of the Birthday link when you export the Facebook Calendar.

To Keep Track of Birthdays

To see the birthday calendar, go to Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars > Subscribed Calendars.

In your iPhone Calendar App, you’ll notice that most of your dates are filled with names. If you enabled Calendar for the Notification Center, you’ll be able to see all the birthdays of today and the days to come.

Conclusion

Now, isn’t this a much easier way to have all your friends’ birthdays details stored in your iPhone? Best of all, the birthdays of your "new friends" will automatically be updated to your iPhone calendar. What is not so good is that after a birthday has passed, you won’t get to view it on the calendar anymore; you can however view the next birthday that person has.

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Related posts:

1. How To Schedule Facebook Birthday Greetings in Advance [Quicktip]
2. A Look Into: Facebook Camera App for iPhone
3. How to Unfollow Post Updates After Leaving Comments on Facebook
4. 5 Things That Shouldn’t Be On Your Facebook