The Business

I’ve done some form of freelance design work for 11 years now, with the last 2 being a full-time endeavor. Since my first HTML course in the fall of ‘99 and publishing my first website by Christmas that year, web design has been one of my main passions.

I’m diligently pushing myself to stay on the cutting edge of industry best practices and techniques to produce an excellent product.

The Techniques

The following is an outline of the practices and techniques I use to produce a product both you and I can be proud of.

Standards Compliance

I follow W3C standards and best-practice principles to develop clean and semantic code. I separate the content (XHTML) the presentation (CSS) and behaviors (Javascript), resulting in an overall better user experience and more efficient development environment.

This allows the website to remain usable and legible even when visiting the site with an incapable browser. Standards also reduce development time and contribute to the ease of future maintenance and updating.

Find-ability

I incorporate and apply the latest SEO techniques and practices. A large part of this is covered by developing compliant code, as outlined above, but there are many other aspects.

There are legitimate and inherent techniques that can be very effective in raising the value of your website with search engines. At the same time, there are shady, “black hat” techniques that can result in your website being banned from search engine indexes and results pages.

Accessibility

I adhere to the WAI recommendations, in connection with Section 508 regulations, concerning disabled users rights. There is still absolutely no justification for alienating and frustrating this group of users, and inviting a potential lawsuit by not following certain practices.

The accessibility and code guidelines are reasonable and easy to implement and there is no excuse for not including them.

Usability

I develop compatible websites that display consistently, properly and as intended across all of the combination’s of screen sizes, browsers and versions, font sizes, and more.

A broken or frustrating website can be very damaging to the value of your web presence.

Responsiveness

I configure the code, website structure and hosting server for maximum performance. Reports show that the majority of internet users are impatient and fickle. If the site does not perform well they move on.

Search engine spiders indexing the web have a hard time with poorly configured websites also. There is much more to developing a website than making it look pretty and work right. By making these under-the-hood adjustments, we offer the best experience to the user and provide your website the best opportunity with the search engines.

Appeal

I strive to create unique and engaging work while honoring the undeniable laws and methods of design, composition, spacing, color, balance, flow, etc.

If a design is too artistic or bizarre, it’s probably serving the designer’s creativeness more than lending itself to accessibility and being helpful to your visitors. Of course, this point depends on your business, market and target audience.

Finally, garish designs like placing neon green text on top of a bright pink background will never, ever be acceptable.

The Jedi Master

Seriously, you’re still reading? Well, I guess I’ll share a little about muh-self. I’m a Texan, husband, father, son, brother, grandson, uncle, nephew and hopefully a good friend to many I call dear friends.

Chris

I love the Lord Jesus Christ, my precious wife, our 2 padawans, all my extended family and friends, laughing, the beach, Texas, Star Wars, Calvin & Hobbes, awkward situations, music, movies, grilling, crab legs, eating, the Black Hills, traveling, skiing, PC gaming, roller-coasters, handcrafting hardwood furniture, reading, Schlitterbahn, computers, technology, professional boxing, dirt bikes, guns and all things design and web.

“The Force is a powerful ally … and a terrible foe.”

So, now that you know everything about me, why not shoot me a quick message! Be it friendly chatter or wanting to hire me for your next job, I’d love to hear from you.