I've had a good deal of experience building websites. Here are some samples of my work and a description of the techniques that I used to build them. If you need a website for your company or organization, then drop me a line and we'll determine what you need based on what you want. I can do the whole process, start to finish, including buying a domain name (something.com) and a server to store your website on the internet.

Technologies I Use:

• Strict, Valid XHTML - This is the basic language of any website, but since it has gone through several versions, many web programmers and website software packages do not produce code that meets current standards. I do, and I write most of my XHTML by hand which means your page will be streamlined and won't have all the tedious extra code that you would get if you used a software package, though you can easily convert your page into something that can be edited by a software package if you decide that you want to edit the site yourself.
• Dynamic Content - With JavaScript and AJAX I can add all sorts of eye-catching effects to your site, like the shiny buttons you see on the left in my site's menu. Moving and changing page elements will show your customers that your page is professional and high-tech. I can add web forms to your site so that users can fill out requests or surveys online and then send the results directly to your e-mail. I can setup parts of your website to communicate directly with your server so that users get instant, dynamic responses to input they provide.
• Server-Side Code Efficiency - Parts of your site will appear on every page of your website, be it your company logo or a site menu. A professional web designer knows that elements like these need to be coded once and then added to each page right before the viewer sees it. This saves a lot of time creating your website, and it makes changing those elements very easy for the future. If you decide to add a new option to your website's menu, you won't want to have to edit every single page that menu's on... you'll want to edit one file and have it take effect on every page immediately. That's just one advantage of server-side technology.

The Proof is in the Pudding!

This Website! (Home Sweet Homepage)

I created this website from scratch. I didn't use any web software packages... just good clean code. Sound low tech? It's not. It's more difficult to do it this way, and it requires extensive knowledge of several different languages, but it is well worth it. The code for this page is probably about half as long as it would have been otherwise, and I have complete control over every single aspect of the page, down to the most minute detail. And I've had enough experience that I can code a page like this in just a few hours.

• Like the menu on the left? - I can put dynamic effects like that on your site too. Those are all original graphics too.
• Server-Side Code - All the common elements of this page (like the menu and the header) were generated with server-side code, which means I wrote it once and my server puts it on every page for me right before you view it. That means it's easy to modify and all I have to write for this page is this text right here!
• Dynamic Elements - Click here to see a pop-up box, or here to change the text in my notification box!
• XSLT + XML - Most data doesn't come already formatted for the internet. Why change it by hand? You'll have to re-do it every time the data changes. That's where the power of XSLT comes in. All the links on my Favorites and Links pages are stored in this XML file. But that's pretty hard to read and it's not XHTML, so I made an XSLT stylesheet to transform it. That stylesheet contains rules to transform my links file into something that's pleasing to the eye. Check out the final product on my Links Page!

The DAXKO Corporate Blog (Temporarily unavailable until DAXKO republishes it)

"Drupal?" you ask? Drupal is a free, open source, highly extendable Content Management System (or CMS) written in PHP. Sites that are content-driven, such as blogs or any sort of community project, can benefit greatly from a CMS. It handles all the bothersome coding (such as the member logins) and lets web designers focus on features. I have used Drupal for other personal projects also.

I designed this project from start to finish for DAXKO, my employer during the summer of 2007. That means everything from initial research to determine what sorts of things companies are blogging about these days to the final implementation. I set up and configured Drupal, implemented several modules, and even wrote a couple of modules myself. I was pleased with the result, which is designed to look like some of the company's other web-based products. When last I checked, there were only test posts on the blog, but it is my hope that soon it will be used publicly.

ColonialBowling.net (Design In Action)

I authored this site for a local bowling alley. Basically they told me they wanted a website, handed me some menus and brochures, and told me to go! I thought up a page design and a color scheme, found or created some images, and a week or two later there it was. What does that matter, you ask? It means I can build your page down to the most minute specification, but if you'd rather leave the design work up to me, I can do that too!

I've since turned that site over to the company and their staff has edited some of the pages. To see some example of my work, check out The Lounge Page and The Snackbar Page.

BipcoInc.com (What's On the Menu Today?)

Most of this site already existed before I was asked to work on it, but I made some important modifications. I did some general (but important) housekeeping stuff like re-sampling the low quality images and cleaning up the code.

But the main thing I added were those spiffy menus you see at the top of each page. Having a dynamic set of menus like that makes your page easier to navigate and it makes it look more professional. For those who know CSS, you will notice that all the formatting is done there rather than in the XHTML tags. For those who don't speak geek, that means it's very easy to add a new option to that menu. And because that menu is generated by server-side code, you'd only have to add it in one file, and it will automatically show up on every page!

The L4E Homepage (Blog the Day Away)

This is the homepage for my online gaming group. But the blog you see there isn't maintained on our website, it's maintained at www.blogger.com. Why create my own blog software when I can get an advanced, full-featured blog for free from Blogger? But the problem is that the blog appears on Blogger's website... not mine. So I wrote some code that goes to the Blogger website, gets the posts off of the blog, formats them to fit the color scheme and look of my website, and then adds the posts to my site. I've added a blog to my site without programming the blog software myself (which would have taken months).

The Forum on this website is an example of a Proboards forum, another very useful free service that would have taken months to make if I had programmed it myself. Most of it is only visible to members of the group, but there is a small public section that should give you the general idea.

The Loyola University Gaming Society (What's Your Website Fantasy?)

This is the website for a club I founded while at college: The Loyola U. Gaming Society. The things to take note of on this page is the way the background image (which looks like an old piece of parchment) expands to fit the contents of the page without warping the picture. Also, the bar on the left that contains the menu stretches all the way down to the bottom of the page, no matter how long or short it is. You might think that sounds easy, but getting it to appear that way in different browsers (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, etc...) is a lot harder than it looks!

Wii-Bit.com (A Work in Progress)

This is an unfinished, still very much under construction page that I am developing in my free time (which is scant). When it is finished, it will feature a chess game that owners of a Nintendo Wii game console can play online and maybe some other games. Creating something like this takes a lot of work and it's still a long way off, but you might like to take a look at the page anyway.

Current Status: Developing the multi-threaded Java server and lobby protocol.