Web Design

I built my first web­page in 1995 or 96 (ack!), back when HTML was done by hand, and Netscape was the rage. Since then, I’ve con­structed web­pages for both indi­vid­u­als and orga­ni­za­tions, in styles rang­ing from aus­tere to zany. While I can cre­ate HTML/CSS pages from scratch, I almost exclu­sively code for con­tent man­age­ment sys­tems these days. Using a CMS makes future upgrades hassle-free, and the ease-of-use for the client makes the choice a no-brainer.

Many orga­ni­za­tions and almost all indi­vid­u­als will be best served by Word­Press. It’s user-friendly, easy to main­tain, and man­ages most writ­ten, visual, and sound con­tent with aplomb. The install and theme devel­op­ment for a Word­Press theme are less inten­sive, mean­ing that a Word­Press site is almost always less expen­sive for the client.

There are some, how­ever, who actu­ally need the horse­power under the hood that Dru­pal pro­vides. Social Net­work­ing plat­forms and mem­ber man­age­ment, diverse con­tent pub­lish­ing, and struc­tured con­tent needs are all good rea­sons to use Dru­pal over Word­Press. For those who need (or just want) Dru­pal, I can pro­vide those solu­tions, too, albeit at a slightly higher cost.

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Any site that I build and/or install will include a tuto­r­ial on its use, and writ­ten instruc­tions for ref­er­ence. Addi­tional help is always avail­able.
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Here is a rep­re­sen­ta­tive sam­ple of web­sites that I have worked on:

Stu­dents Rebuild

As an Master’s-level intern with this ini­tia­tive of the Bezos Fam­ily Foun­da­tion, I was priv­i­leged to work on the Dru­pal land­ing page for Stu­dents Rebuild. Fur­ther work I am cur­rently under­tak­ing as an inde­pen­dent con­trac­tor includes the updat­ing of all blog, photo, and video page tax­onomies, and new menu dis­plays for URLs below the homepage.

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Evil Slave, LLC

Evil Slave is a local film pro­duc­tion com­pany, that needed a branded web pres­ence. Start­ing with a graphic image (the goofy-looking demon char­ac­ter), I devel­oped a site that reflects the quirky, edgy, and not-quite-scary nature of this fun-loving orga­ni­za­tion. This site is in Word­Press, and fea­tures gal­leries, javascript inter­ac­tive menus, and lots of  “Evil-speak.”

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Julie H. Case

Julie is a local travel, wine/food, and alumni author. She needed to update her site, and wanted a design that would be a visual rep­re­sen­ta­tion of her writ­ten work. Julie also wanted to keep the design as clean as pos­si­ble, and let her writ­ing take cen­ter stage. I cre­ated her home page as a gallery of the cov­ers of mag­a­zines that her work has been fea­tured in (the gallery can option­ally be sortable by tags). This site also has a blog, cus­tom menus, and an RSS feed of her Seat­tle Met “Wine Wednes­day” articles.

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Dilet­tante Douchebag

Once I com­pleted the [link url=“http://evil-slave.com”]Evil Slave website[/link], I was asked by one of the Evil Slave prin­ci­pals to build his film review blog brand­ing. The “author” of this blog is a pre­ten­tious, hip­ster car­i­ca­ture, so I cre­ated a strong–busy, even–background image that was then over­laid with transparent-to-opaque active menu and con­tent areas. As with Evil Slave, most con­tent is one or two clicks away.