I write the code that brings website designs to life.
My skillset lies between the programmer and the designer (with some added experience on either side), bringing together the graphics and the code to form a strict XHTML and CSS website that conforms to modern web standards.
A standards compliant website is not only easier to debug and maintain but is also faster to load. As there are more ways of interpreting the web then ever, I think it's important to keep accessibility and usability at the forefront of any website.
"An accessible site allows all users to access it, regardless of their browser, resolution, settings, or eyesight. Accessible sites are open to the world's 750 million disabled people, including the sizeable blind population. Through better authoring, Web information providers can avoid shutting out the world's disabled population from the information age, and can garner a good portion of this largely ignored market.
On the Web, the "blind population" includes the robots of search engines. Since the search engines' robots are text-only and generally support only HTML 2.0, accessibility can be a significant advantage in getting favorably indexed by the search engines. Sites that hide content in ALT-less images are hurting their chances of being found by users..." Source
As well as creating a compliant website from scratch I also take existing sites that have been poorly coded and bring them kicking and screaming into the modern age of the web, therefore making it easy to maintain and organise. Additionally, I analyse existing site designs and pick up on places for improvement that result in better visitor interaction, search engine ranking and easier maintenance.
I sometimes work with the backend of a website, including scripting with a dynamic server side language such as PHP to add some basic handy functions to a site as well as making it easier to update.
I've had extensive experience of working with a corporate level Content Management System, and using XML & XSL to provide applications in a business environment. This has required me to manage multiple content servers, configure them to operate with Apache Webserver and even set rules to allow Java & PHP to run smoothly on one environment.
Some notable things that I do:
My location is near to Southend-on-Sea which leaves me about an hour away from Central London via train. I can drive and am willing to travel when required.
All of the content, code and graphics were created by me, using my trusty tools of choice - Notepad++ and Photoshop.
It's completely XHTML 1.0 Strict and CSS compliant and also uses a series of PHP includes to construct a template system that allows easy updating. It renders correctly in all major browsers and even as far back as IE 5.5, if anyone out there still uses it (I sincerely hope not) then you're in luck.
For those visitors that were expecting to see my level design blog (it used to be the default page) then fear not, as you can still access it. I'm not sure if I will be able to carry on updating it, but never say never.
For now I hope it helps purely as a reference.