I had to make three decisions this last month that were hard.

All involved not taking clients.

One was a client who we interviewed, actually initially began to work for, and then discovered through the process that we weren’t the right fit for their project. It wasn’t personal, we truly like and respect and support this person, their team and their goals, but the principal players involved wanted us to do things, that we didn’t feel were best for them. We felt that so strongly about that, that we are issued a partial refund and referred them to someone who can better fill their needs. It is the only time I can remember in nearly 10 years I’ve had to do that.

The other was a small business that we interviewed. A B2B service provider, they are growing and need a new look for their site. But after meeting them, their budget and goals are better served by a large service with very very low pricing. We know that is what is best for them and will best give them the results they need. Then we were approached by a similar business, via email. Pretty obvious that the case was similar, right down to tone of the email.

I hate to say no or to turn away business. But sometimes it is what is best for all involved and we honestly should refer and not be hired. I think it’s an important part of business, knowing when to say no. It’s also risky, knowing we might be misinterpreted, and like everyone, we hate to lose money. But in the long run, we have to do what is right.

We do really want what is best for our clients, even if it costs us up front. We think in the long run, the payoff is worth it.

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Sometimes working with a client is too delicious.

I have a client now I’m working with (and plan to work with forever, thank you), and she is just the cat’s banana. She is smart, funny, quirky, artistic. She has written 17 books and has a graduate degree from an Ivy League school. She is a SERIOUS foodie, horticulturist, photographer, writer. She has this amazing sense of Collections. and Connections. She is a china addict. If you don’t know what that is, you wouldn’t understand, but I chose my china pattern at age 16 and so I appreciate it deeply. Her word choices in ordinary sentences are fascinating to me…just in conversation.

I dig her.

Anyhow, so last week I drive up to her log cabin (been in her family 100 years, she moved and restored it herself) to do some training. The fields are golden, her lawn is dripping with flowers. Butterflies everywhere. There are these fanciful structures made of tree branches that remind me of fairy huts. Enameled blue sundials. A cheerful rusty metal dog. The barns cast these shadows on her cabin like they’re protecting it. It’s late afternoon. Her dog hates me for 10 minutes before he decides to trust me, like usual. (Forgetful thankless gorgeous beast.) And she offers me hibiscus tea, as if it’s normal, before we settle into her cozy chaotic nest to work. Everywhere I look the fading sunshine streams down onto an insane art piece or wistfully climbing plant. Some piece of beauty. She has these beautiful water bottles that look like champagne bottles, neatly arranged in a half circle at the edge of her kitchen hallway, on the floor. They’re really stunning in the group, obviously not their permanent home, but even the pieces of chaos are arresting.

She’s learning to edit pages in her website. And the process is really joyful to watch. She cusses mildly when she hits a wrong button. Everyone does, but hers are unapologetic and weirdly hopeful. Each one gets her closer to mastery. She’s so excited about doing this, about her website.

There are four computers that I know of running in this sprawling home. She plans on getting more. “I need something for my photo processing.” But because they all connect via satellite and things take a while to load? She has 4,367 window tabs open on each one. She reads while she waits.

Now on one of the pages of her website, I’ve made a style of photo for her blog area, a long strip of horizontal over-sized goodness that makes her Stylish if she uses it as a template …size and orientation. She just looks at me over her glasses and declares matter-of-factly, “Life is not always horizontal.”

That’s a tweet. And she’s learning to use social media and needs notification of Tweet-worthiness, still…So I point it out to her. Too bad you can’t translate tone and facial expression on Twitter. That was priceless.

There’s a sign next to her nest on a shelf. It reads “Invite someone dangerous to tea.” I wonder if I’m dangerous. I tell her my Descartes joke and she gets it. (Descartes walks into a bar and sits down. The bartender says, “Hey buddy, want a beer? Descartes says, ” I think not…” and disappears.) Two hours pass too quickly. At one point she sets me up on a computer in another room so she can write without my presence. I make her nervous. I sit in there and check my email, pretending not to hear her gentle invectives and threats against her laptop, just grinning. Before I leave she’s doing much better with it all. And I’ve gotten an education on politics, three funny stories, and learned about fruit nerds. Real fruit, like apples and cherries. I didn’t know such a thing existed. They have conventions.

This woman came to me with aspirations to blog about vinegar. Yes. Vinegar. I cannot wait to unveil what we actually ended up doing. Let’s just say it’s not exactly what she had in mind at first.

My clients are gifts to me. This one in particular is a special gift to me.

I can’t wait to “unwrap” her site to help give her to the world.

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This article is really about TinyMCE, or as one client of mine calls it, “Tiny Mice.” TinyMCE is the Rich Text Editor most commonly used with MODx. There are other editors available and if you have a lot of problems with TinyMCE, then let us know, we can try one of the others to see if it is a better fit for you. But hopefully with a little training you’ll be zooming along. There is always a learning curve.

The first issue I hear about a lot deals with extra space between paragraphs. We can set a style to completely take this out, and we can also program this completely away, but that is not always best for you. The offending tag is the paragraph tag or “p” tag. If you hit “return” at the end of a paragraph it is automatically added. This is good for you actually, because it is valid mark-up. It is bad because the space added sometimes is more than you want. We prefer to teach you, rather than program this feature out.

The solution is “Shift-return.” This key combo will make a simple line break rather than a paragraph and the space between lines will be diminished. While not strictly valid, it isn’t a huge faux pas either, and is okay to use. Hitting shift-return produces a “br” tag and not a “p.”

Say you hit “Return” instead of “Shift-return.” Accidentally. After you finish cursing, leave your cursor at the beginning of the new paragraph you just inserted, hit “delete” or “backspace” and then hit “shift-return.” Voila. Space gone.

The other huge HUGE key to handling your Rich Text Editor is the “Path” menu.

“What’s that?” you say.

Most people have no idea this particular item exists.

It’s at the bottom of your textarea box. Usually gray, if you put your cursor in the textarea in the middle of a sentence, you will see something like this in it:
“Path: table » tbody » tr » td » p » a”

The magic key is, if you select one of those elements? Say the “p”? then you actually select the paragraph inside it.

I’ll show you. Showing is easier. This first screen shot shows the Rich Text editor, TinyMCE. At the bottom, I’ve circled the “Path” menu in red. If you do not have a “Path” menu, call me and I’ll change your settings so you do have one. Or you can bug your current webmaster to do it if you don’t use me. It takes just a few minutes to change in MODx.

Practice clicking a few of the items in the list there. Yours might look different. As you do, you should notice content up in the textarea box turning blue. That’s because you are actually selecting that content with the Path menu.

Screenshot below:

So, when you hit the wrong button and suddenly weird boxes appear where they shouldn’t, you can now click into them with your cursor, click each tag in the Path menu until the intruder turns blue. And hit delete. And it will go away. Amazing.

Say there is a style applied to an element but you don’t know which one and can’t get rid of it? Simple, you look at the path menu till you see something with a dot in the name. It will look like this: “p.style1″ or this: “span.small”

If it has a dot in it? then the part before the dot is the element type (a paragraph or span or table) and then the part after the dot is the name of the style. There is a style dropdown menu and you can undo the style by selecting the element in the path menu and then clicking the eraser tool (remove formatting). You can apply another style by choosing one from the “styles” dropdown menu.

Screenshot:

It’s really helpful to know about that Path Menu.

If you have different buttons or want different buttons in your TinyMCE configuration, let us know and we’ll change it up for you, again, it is easy to customize in a few minutes.

Okay, so if you have questions, feel free to ask and happy blogging!

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