Web Design
Designing websites since 1996, I have come to appreciate the amount of work, dedication and effort the art of coding, designing and marketing a website takes. Because of my long experience with Mygamer.com, my abilities with web development and management have become extensive. I am proficient with XHTML, HTML, XML, C++, CSS, JavaScript, ASP, PERL, PHP, MySQL and CSS.
I have a passion for beautiful but effective design, and web development allows me to marry that passion with a large level of interactivity.
My experiences with web-development have ranged from the most armature attempts to professional grade implementation. I've done nearly every job available in the daily operation of a website: I've done redesigns, coding, graphic designs, writing, PR, data mining, writing and the like.
Please select from the Web sites below to see my work from each.
Highlighted works (or see all works)
Myspace Account
With over 54 million users, Myspace is officially the most popular online community on the internet. Intermix Media, owner of Myspace.com, was recently bought by News Corp (owned by Fox Interactive) for $580m. Myspace, however can also claim the title to the worst coded website seen online in the last 6 years. It's code base consists of a nasty and unorganized hodge podge of basic HTML 4.01 transitional. And because this is a community site, and people simply just love to individualize their alter-electronic-egos, it allows you to customize your page to you. With your own individual information, backgrounds, amazing colored borders and flashing pictures alike. However, there is a community of web designers who took upon themselves, the task of going beyond normal ability and effort.
So using this disgusting code and coping with an inordinate amount of restraints (can't use scripts, embedded objects, frames, etc), these special few created what I consider real web designs. My effort to join the fray was a fun romp of about 4 days of complete annoyance. Creating a website with myspace code is like creating the Venus de Milo with petrified cow dung, difficult to say the least. I took it as a task of designing with all of my limbs bound, or better yet, severed. And the end result is rather impressive. Embedded flash photo-gallery piece, css div overlays, image replacement, and on the backend there is a clear seperation of content from presentation. Whoever would have thought you could do so much with CSS and HTML. Of course creating a website with that code is very dumb, limiting, frustrating, and much more difficult than necessary. Hopefully, I shall not be doing it again, hopefully. I'd like to thank my best friend on the project for it's invaluable assitence, Absolute Positioning.
Silver's Personal Blog
This site, though the core design is finished, is still being fleshed out in terms of concept. It was meant to be an online journal/scrapbook for myself, and is slowly turning into more. Having both a personal and tech review section, the development of the site is certainly evolving from the original concept. The idea was formulated from having an online sketchbook where I could write and show myself things, and so the concept was fairly original. I wanted to make a site look more like a notebook than a website. I feel it's conveyed quite well in the multilayer design. Once again the color scheme is black, white and grey (or silver) as a representation of my favorite color elements -- or lack of depending on your opinion. The site is an amalgam of XHTML, PHP and CSS. All of the pages are dynamically created with PHP and Wordpress 2.0 under valid XHTML (content) and CSS (structure and styling). The design is elegant and clean, something I'll definitely be doing more of. Previous designs seem quite sloppy in comparison, but this is what happens when you refine your XHTML, PHP and CSS abilities.
Mygamer.com 3.0
This is the most current design of our website without all the advertisement space. We used all of our previous knowledge and experience to create a fully comprehensive and professional grade design and implementation. With a full behind the scenes management system, new graphical elements, a full featured forum, automated tasks and the like, we took a new step into the world of game journalism. The roll I played in this site was the determination of the features list (we added an arcade, determination of game buy multiple metadata options, newsletter, sub-domain blogging for each member, a new gallery, navigation, review score determination etc.), the new Mygamer logo, art direction for each section, and also the roll I've played for a while, Managing Editor, still handling all top level publication, reporting, interviews, exclusivity and public relations. Instead of doing details however, I handled the overall management of all internal and external business.
I-Elect.com
I-ELECT was a multimedia political reporting project in conjunction with the University of Illinois College of Communications. The project was undertaken by students in a journalism class and has been overseen by Department of Journalism faculty. The group of students organized in a newsroom to produce print, online and broadcast products. The group also conducted a scientific survey to drive its reporting. The idea behind the project was students covering students. The Daily Illini, WPGU-FM 107.1, WILL-AM 580 and others assisted with the project. I was the web developer for this media convergence project. We implemented the radio show and all written materials into the website, along with verbal quotes an moving flash sound bites. The purpose of the site was to create a completely converged feel and interactivity into the subject we were covering, a students view of the 2004 elections.
News Gazette Redesign
Since this Web Design class focused on somewhat real world application, our second project was to redesign a current news paper, the local one in Champaign called the News Gazette. They officially have one of the worst news websites I've ever seen, of course they're not a mainstream newspaper with an unlimited budget. So I took it upon myself to give it a more effective and graphical design. Placing the things of general interest "above the fold" in the side column, while the main headlines held the most apparent positions. Used mainly XHTML and CSS on this one, and it turned out nicely, much better then my competition.
Gameunit.com 2.0
In need of a massive update from its original rudimentary design, we decided to update our original site while starting a new one (Mygamer.com). And while Mygamer got the full brunt of our efforts of penetrating the videogame publication market, I felt the need to create a highly appealing design inspired by one of my favorite magazines of all time, Gamers Republic. Really, in terms of navigation and online features, this site was of the most basic kind, but there was something about the use of elegant color coordination, and crisp graphics that created an appealing, attractive and effective site. I served as senior editor hear, along with data base management and writing.
Mygamer.com 1.5
This version of MyGamer ended up being the true and natural form of our new effort. It ended up being more graphically representative, along with a full forum, a reviews, previews, downloads, editorials, and members implementation all automatically controlled and managed. The focus came off of technical design and was placed on important content. Like any organization, drama ran rampant, and it was with this site that I was promoted to Managing Editor. And while I still wrote reviews (some of which were recognized by much bigger sites bringing us a huge amount of new viewers) and did graphical elements on the site, my main job was staff organization, public relations, news, editing and publication deadlines. While life became a large deadline, managed between a staff of 30+, public relations became an important roll in the site. Without the content to back our (at the time) magnificent new design, we would be lost. So I attracted over 150 videogame publishers, developers and hardware manufactures to do business with us so we could have content to review. It was a feat of the most impressive kind.
Ten Reasons I Love Journ. 360
One of the best classes I've ever taken was journalism desktop publishing and graphic design. It was an impressive leap into the world of professional print. The final project was a quick introduction into online publishing. And being already well versed, I did like I often did in this class, went overboard with my effort. The result is a graphic based top ten reasons for loving (really hating) this class. The reasons range from the work load to the environment. It was one of the toughest classes I've ever taken, and the final project was one I finished with shining pride.
The Core
Two semesters before my graduation, I took a web journalism web development class. Though I'd already been well versed in web-design, the ambition to learn more never stopped. So "The Core" is the result of a final project of the students of Journ. 391. The instructor really wanted to focus on integrating video, to show convergence of broadcast and online print. The idea involves that there are certain essential things necessary to know to survive as a journalism student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and this was "The Core," of that knowledge. Unfortunately I was still coding with an emphasis on Internet Explorer, so the site only displays corectly in that browser.
Resume 1.0
This was the first site I did for Journ. 391 (web-development). The goal was to be an introduction into the world of online development. Our task was to create a resume site, that had all the accessibility of news paper. Multiple entry points, easy and declarative navigation, and the ability to get to any particular part of the site within three clicks. No easy task, but surely a fun project for budding online developers. This was one of my first forays into using graphical representation as the focal point rather then text base guidance, and I think it turned out quite nice, even if none of the code validated completely :-P.
Mygamer.com 2.0
While our previous site provided a certainly large assortment of features, we felt it was still an armature-like effort in the shadow of major online video game publications like IGN and GameSpot, so we went for a more impressive and still more automated design. While the graphics were done by me and other in house staff, the coding was outsourced, and what we got was a highly functional and beautiful site. Being the best looking site to date, we could sense the size of our site increasing by the day. With a member list that tripled since Mygamer 1.5, our spirits were high. My job again moved further away from the technical aspects of the site into the world of Management. Where I began as an official PR director as well as Managing Editor: hiring and firing writers and editors, negotiating exclusivity agreements and dealing -- for the first time -- with advertisers who actually paid a substantial dividend on ad clicks. All of a sudden, our readership numbers became important, unique viewer per week, ad-click-throughs and total membership numbers became important indicators for videogame companies. It was at this time we received 700,000 unique visitors a week up from 300k before that, and 100 before that and a mere 30k at the start of the original Mygamer.