When people ask me, “What do you do?” I usually respond, “I’m a producer for a website.” It’s basically a site for visitors to search for a home or property to buy. As a producer, I help a lot more with the front end stuff, working with HTML and CSS. Lately, I’ve gotten some extra projects that involve javascript and ruby, which has been a blast to work with. I do some basic coding and not any major programming, but I’ve been really happy working there. This is stuff that I usually did in my spare time during college and my last few jobs. I’m kind of psyched that all that work and learning I put in on my own time has finally paid off. And this job offers me new stuff to learn as well as the opportunity to sharpen my skills.

So yeah, I love coming to work. The people here are awesome. The environment is pretty lax; I love wearing jeans to work. Currently, I have a 10 minute walk to and from work, but that’ll change once I move to my own place. Work may be farther from my new place, but I think I’ll love the area that I’m moving to. And I’ve also grown to love working on an actual ‘product.’ This is a site that millions of users utilize, and it feels great to know that I’m putting something into that. It almost feels like something I’m a part of helping to create. If I could, I would work on websites as my career… Google, I’m looking at you!

It’s a great job. The only downside is that it’s a contract job. They’ve extended it, which was really awesome. But I would really like to be there full time with benefits. However, I’ve been getting more and more projects that are a bit outside of the scope of the original role they intended. So hopefully working on these projects will show them how much value I can add to the team. Keepin’ those fingers crossed.

Ionburn had been dormant for a long time, but I had been working on it for a while. It’s now updated. When you first go, it may look the same, but hang around for a minute and then you should notice something. There were more features than what’s there now, but I’m still working the bugs out. I made that one from scratch so I hope you like it.

JayNCoke got a total makeover as well. I made that one myself; and I’m really proud of it. I really want the site to be a sort of online portfolio more than a blog. I had to incorporate some nifty javascript fade effects as well as some full-on AJAX navigation. Also on the home page I created a sort of “lifestream” to pull my various web activity and put it in one place. There are several sites that do this to varying degrees, but I thought it’d be a cool project to do on my own.

So that’s it for now. Like I said before, I got some posts in the works as well. Hopefully I can keep my promise and update regularly now. If not, someone please remind me with a nice kick-in-the-butt.

Hehehe, this is such a great video… at least for web designers and coders like me.

Lyrics:

Your site design is the first thing people see
it should be reflective of you and the industry
easy to look at with a nice navigation
when you can’t find what you want it causes frustration
a clear Call to action to increase the temptation
use appealing graphics they create motivation
if you have animation
use with moderation
cause search engines can’t index the information
display the logos of all your associations
highlight your contact info that’s an obligation
create a clean design you can use some decoration
but to try to prevent any client hesitation
every page that they click should provide and explanation
should be easy to understand like having a conversation
when you design the style go ahead and use your imagination
but make sure you use correct color combinations
do some investigation, look at other organizations
but don’t duplicate or you might face a litigation
design done, congratulations but it’s time to start construction
follow these instructions when you move into production
your photoshop functions then slice that design
do your layout with divs make sure that it’s aligned
please don’t use tables even though they work fine
when it come to indexing they give searches a hard time
make it easy for the spiders to crawl what you provide
remove font type, font color and font size
no background colors, keep your coding real neat,
tag your look and feel on a separate style sheet
better results with xml and css
now you making progress, a lil closer to success
describe your doctype so the browser can relate
make sure you do it great or it won’t validate
check in all browsers, I do it directly
gotta make sure that it renders correctly
some use IE, some others use Flock
some use AOL, I use Firefox
title everything including links and images
don’t use italics, use emphasis
don’t use bold, please use strong
if you use bold that’s old and wrong
when you use CSS, you page will load quicker
client satisfied like they eating on a snicker
they stuck on your page like you made it with a sticker
and then they convert now that’s the real kicker
make you a lil richer, your site a lil slicker
design and code right man I hope you get the picture
what I’m telling you is true man it should be a scripture
if it’s built right you’ll be the pick of the litter
everyone will want to follow you like twitter
competition will get bitter and you’ll shine like glitter
if you trying to grow your company will get bigger
design and code right man can you get with it