In a nutshell, I design, build and market websites. As I’ve matured as a designer/developer and student of the latest internet trends, I’ve dedicated my time and resources to mastering the tools that allow clients to create and maintain their own content.

My design style follows the rules of simplicity and clearly representing the product, service or concept being presented. The color tone, layout, and menu design are crucial to projecting the right impression upon the visitor and motivating them to take a desired action. I make a conscious effort to stay up on the latest design styles and techniques to ensure I’m making the best design choices when the time comes.

I’m a proponent of open source technologies, and believe that the best web systems are being developed by open source communities that empower thousands of developers to build on each other’s great work.

At this point I’m exclusively working with WordPress for blog and CMS sites, and Zen Cart for e-commerce sites. These two open-source frameworks are mature enough to provide a stable coding environment and are flexible enough to fit all of my client’s needs.

WordPress is the premier blogging platform and is growing to be a leading content management framework. I love it as a designer because of the amount of pre-made themes that match about any website model. I love it as a developer because I can easily change the framework to fit any specific needs a client has. I love it as a freelance business owner because it’s easy for clients to learn how to maintain their own content.

Zen-Cart is a powerful open source e-commerce platform. It’s mature framework is already configured to manage categories, products, shipping and payment methods. the admin is easy to manage and customize to a client’s needs. The underlying code is not particularly easy to change, but can be done when necessary. The admin is reasonably easy for a client to understand well enough to maintain their store.

Adobe CS3- All of my graphic design is created on a mac running Adobe CS-3. To get quick view of my skill level with Adobe CS3 please view my “Skill-O-Meter” on my About Page.

Hosting: I provide hosting for my clients through a master account I have with HostGator. The server is a standard linux system running Apache with Cpanel as the system control interface. I’ve had an excellent experience with Host Gator, and find them quite helpful with questions or custom requests. I normally package the hosting fees as a side item with the development agreement. I charge a yearly fee for hosting. If a client has a preferred host, I can normally work with that as well.