About Me

I started freelancing in 2007 while attending Alexandria Technical College for Website Development.  Building websites has been my passion since I took an HTML class in high school.

There are four main elements to a successful website.

1. Design
2. Front-end Development
3. Back-end Development
4. Search Engine Optimization

1. Design

Every website must have a good design. Design includes an easy to use navigation, clean layout, and colors.  Each part plays a very important role.  Easy navigation gives end-users a way to navigate your website without any extra direction.  A clean layout is an organized layout that allows the pages and information to flow. Lastly, colors – generally, the colors on your website should match your business colors or be pulled from your chosen logo.  If you’re not a business and just want a website or a blog, you can still choose colors but keep in mind that certain colors give off certain moods.

2. Front-end Development

Once a design has been established, work begins for front-end development.  This involves taking images from the layouts and coding them in to a page using technologies such as CSS, HTML, and JavaScript.  Forms, image rotators, and image galleries can also be built during this phase.

3. Back-end Development

Here is where a lot of “magic” takes place. Websites that require a database, use of a framework, or a platform (WordPress, Drupal or Joomla!) require a clear understanding of those technologies.  Generally this part is left to the Developer to make a suggestion and go forward with the best plan.

4. Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the ranking of your website in a search engine (Google, Yahoo, Ask) naturally (or unpaid). There are steps that can be taken place during development to help improve Search Engine Optimization but much of the work comes after the website is built.  The more you can advertise your site the better SEO results you’ll have.  Having a social networking page that points people to your website, contributing to popular blogs and submitting your website on there will create a path for spiders, crawlers, and bots to get to your website.  The more traffic you can drive to your site, the higher rankings you will get in search engines.

Those four elements is what drives a successful website and I strive to give equal attention to each.  Not every website has the same requirements and needs but there is a solution for all websites.