Welcome to the first entry in what I believe will be an interesting ride documenting the adventures of me... The Pixel Gnome.... on my journey to become a professional web builder.
Let me start off by explaining my mission, and the events that lead me to this point.........
How did I get here?
I never meant to get into the IT industry, but in the late eighties, after leaving my first job with very little interest in accounts, but having gained some experience with personal computing through that job, I started as all-round pc guy in HMV.
This was not a career that I made much effort in cultivating, but the early nineties saw me doing alot of backpacking, doing odd-jobs in the IT industry around the world, finally ending up in Hong Kong as a programmer.
Inevitably, as anyone in the IT industry in the late nineties - until now - knows, whenever one's friends and acquaintances discover that you are 'into computers' one is bombarded with request to help them with their internet connection.
I have to say that sometimes this really pisses me off. At one point, in 2000, I resolved to start telling people I was a gynecologist. Did this result in every female I met to ask me to take a look under the hood? No it did not. My disappointment was offset by the pleasure in being able to use this example to excuse my unwillingness to help those who subsequently badger me to help them with their pc.
Anyway, this led to some friends of mine, about 7 years ago, asking me to 'program' them a web site. My curiosity had already led me to examine HTML (I think 3 at that point), and I believe that I had heard of css... but never seen or used it. I DID incorporate CSS into my designs, but I did not understand the 'cascade' part, and certainly did not understand their point or usage properly, and thus my layouts for the next few years were exclusively table based layouts.
I had also not become aware of the tables/css layout issue, nor concerned myself with keeping markup valid. I think the ONLY thing I did right was test my pages in multiple browsers. And of course coming up with what I STILL think was rather a nice design.
The friend I had done this for later told me that she got a 'best website design' accolade from the user group she joined - an alternative therapy group, which made me rather proud. This site is still as it was, and one of the things I would like to do is re-vamp this suite with an update of the design AND make it accessible and valid!
If anyone is interested take a look at
healing fire.
If you are viewing in Firefox (as am I).... ooops! Well as I say, I will be contacting my friend and offering a cheap upgrade soon..!
Around this time, coming from a programming background as I did, I tended to go completely overboard with java/dhtml. Example:
Easter Printing CompanyLastly... my last tables design, for my brother in law:
Beaumont Street Dental Practice I also learnt PHP at this time, and created a rather nice looking data grid.. I will link to an example at a later date.
Where am I going?
Well Now I find myself doing my sisters website (
The Wedding Bible) and attempting a pure CSS design. The people behind this website are print designers, and as such they know what they want, although there understanding of the differences between web and print design leave a little to be desired. However it WAS refreshing to hear someone say 'This is what I want on my website, and here's how I want it to look' rather than the usual conversation that goes something like this:
Friend/Client : "Hi Red. I want a website, will you 'program' one for me?"
Me : "Ok ... what do you want to have on it, what does it do, what is it for and
who is it's intended audience?"
'Client : "Er, I don't know... you're the web designer"
At least this last approach gives me free reign!
The other thing that used to piss me off was the money. Often I hear, upon quoting my price (which I was always unsure of... especially since I was in no way a professional designer - YET): "what?!? I can do it myself in Front page in 10 minutes!"
If I ever meet the guy that came up with the advertising slogan 'have a professional website up in minutes!' I'm going to kick his arse.
I have consistently undercharged my friends and family, and as a result have spent 100's of hours working... in my spare time... for little or no money. I would say that on average I have earned about $1USD per hour!
This has GOT to stop. My brother in law recently told me that he had gained scores of patients due to my website for him (which, although it is a table layout, I am again quite pleased with) and that he realized I had spent more time on it than he had originally imagined, and that at some point he would like to update it and pay me properly. My sister has also paid me properly for the website I am doing for her now.
It is still ALOT of work to build and maintain a website, and I have decided that if this is what I am going to do, I should do it:
- More efficiently
- To a higher degree of professionalism
- For reasonable pay (as opposed to ridiculously cheaply)
Why am I doing this?
Mainly because I enjoy it, however this is not enough... I enjoy alot of things, but am not necessarily good enough at them to do them for a living. I have noticed though, that when I have spent the time and taken the trouble to build these sites, I have been creative, hardworking, and innovative (in my own little way). Imagine what I could do if I learnt CSS properly, If I honed my graphical skills (I had never edited an image before 2000), and if I positioned my skills well enough that they complimented each other.
The other reason of course is that I hate my office job - and get paid shockingly badly for hours of hard work there.
So there it is. I have spent countless hours learning the intricacies of css design, learned Photoshop and Gimp, swatted up on my html, pondered the use of dhtml, xml, Ajax, and tried countless editors. Here I am ready to embark on my attempt to become a
professional web designer and page builder.
