I noticed the other day that my account on Drupal.org is coming up to its three year anniversary, which means I've probably been working with Drupal for four years now. So I took a look back at some of the old Drupal sites I had put together, and like most developers, almost cringed at what I had done to some of those sites. So, with nearly four years under my belt, these are five things I wish I had been doing in 2005, when I started.

Normally, a letter like this would be addressed to existing readership, but considering the number of articles and how long it's been - mom, I'll be writing again!

Frequently Asked Questions, or FAQs, as they're affectionately known, are a staple on the majority of informational and e-commerce websites. You can find them on a wide range of super popular sites, from Newegg to Digg, from Myspace to ABC.

Unfortunately, they're a cop out.

FAQs are a quick way to address an issue, but like the trivia section on Wikipedia, there's likely a better place to put it. Let's take Digg as an example and see how this can be improved.

In its most recent issue as of this posting (Issue #272), A List Apart released an article entitled A More Useful 404. This article laid forth a method of how to write a 404 page that's useful to both web administrators and users alike - one that will e-mail the admin an error e-mail letting them know what kind of 404 error there was, and a custom error message for the user that can help point them in the right direction, or at least let them know about the problem.

As your freelancing and studio work progresses, you eventually will have a body of work that you'll be able to pull from in order to woo potential new clients. There is a tendency for all of us to show our entire body of work. This gives the impression of more experience and a wider variety of work, so that potential clients from all areas will be more likely to choose you. However, is that what you really want?