I’m a full-time professional web designer who enjoys taking a break from large scale corporate projects to moonlight on smaller sites. Ideas from these more creative projects feed my mainstream work and keep my perspective fresh.
I am physically located in London, England, and I develop sites, register domains, and sort out hosting for clients anywhere in the world.
Turn around is usually less than two weeks; for some projects, two days. Prices start at $250US and go up from there. I’m happy to tell you the cost for any of these portfolio sites if you’re interested.
Typically, for this type of inexpensive development, I deliver a fully-functioning templated site, leaving the client to input the text on the pages. For database driven sites, the site is all designed and you just need to use the secure web form admin section to add, edit and delete content. Clients do not need any coding skills to manage sites I build for them.
A very nifty content management system drives this organization’s site. The critical factor was that everything had to be managed from a web interface with zero need to know any HTML. They’ve got that, from the text content to the point-and-click image gallery.
Upcoming performances are promoted on the homepage automatically, and visitors can purchase audio CDs online or by mail order.
Because the people in the organisation change annually, illustrations are used for navigation and colour.
This is a neat way to have fun and make some money. The site features indexed reviews of beauty products. There are “buy online” links at the end of each review, linking to the product at drugstore.com, where affiliate sales commission is earned. (This could be adapted to a regular online sales site, too.)
The site is totally database driven; content is easy to add, edit and delete through secure web-based admin forms. New content is automatically displayed on the homepage, keeping the site fresh. Newsletters build visitor loyalty, and are managed through the database too.
This was a fun and fast little project. They sent me their logo and a list of their services, and I asked them to rate their “hip factor” on a scale of 1 – 10.
I delivered a complete template site, meaning all of the pages were built and had the individual graphics in place. All they had to do was re-type their text for each page. Most of the effort here was in selecting and editing stock photography or creating custom graphics.
You can see the completed template I designed and delivered, as well as what the client did with it.
My personal website, run for fun and as a playground for my ASP ideas and more bizarre design inclinations. (For some reason, I don’t get a lot of clients saying “Can you do something in pastel pink and baby blue?”) I just wanted to do something totally non-corporate and very personal for a change.
Currently, the journal, notify list, and wish list are all run off Access databases, and the homepage updates automatically when content changes. This means zero maintenance, which is always a good thing. Only the TravelBlog is coded by hand to allow for more fluid layouts.
A huge database job, requiring six solid weeks of development. Discussion forums, the story library, advice columns, news, and reviews are all dynamically served. Other databases run online shopping, a postcard service and a paid Subscribers area.
This site does the job perfectly, with nice features like allowing authors to edit their stories online, and columnists to instantly publish their columns.
Online payments are easily handled through PayPal for both the shopping cart and the subscribers’ area.
Another totally database driven site, maintained by a variety of people. The site features a discussion forum, a big family photo gallery (random images on the home page!) and a pretty nifty family events calendar.
It has a built in reminder service so we can nag each other to remember various birthdays and family occasions. For the late running family members, there are also links to various e-card sites.
Finally, there is also an ongoing family tree project, and one of these days run it off a database.
This was a horribly depressing project, which can happen with templates. The original design was invigorating and high contrast, and the client kept asking me to tone it down. And down. And down.
After the template was handed over, they “improved” it some more with bad code, a terrible font, and dodgy css.
However, the point of handing a design over to a client is that is then under their control, for better or for worse. This site is an object lesson: you probably don’t want to alter anything in a template but the text. Seriously.