About my services
The main services I offer these days are WordPress sites and XHTML/CSS template development. Here’s a little more background and information on what I offer and why I offer it…
Scaling down
Around 2003, a colleague and I built a full-scale Content Management System. It was—though I say so myself—pretty damn good.
However, neither of us was prepared to take it to the next level and employ people to develop it further. Also, while “locking clients in” to a proprietary system was (and still is) the avowed business model of many companies, I disagreed. If for any reason we could no longer continue our relationship with a client, we would be, to a certain extent, letting them down, leaving them with a system that would take a while for anyone else to get up to speed with.
This is part of the reason I shifted to using WordPress. It’s free, open source, and very popular. In part I’m exposing myself to a risk here; any client could with reasonable ease hire another WordPress developer and drop me.
But the other part of the reason for moving to WordPress was that our custom-built CMS was designed for large-scale sites, and I found I enjoyed working with smaller clients more.
And here’s the key: I base my business on building and sustaining trusted relationships with clients. They hire me for my web skills (and my charming smile); they return, I believe, for these skills and my reliability, candour, clarity of communication, friendliness and flexibility.
Openness
I see the openness of the WordPress platform as part of the basis for this trust. Too often I’ve seen companies locked into soul-destroying deals with web service providers, where they return to them for business because it would be too costly to break away. I like to think my clients return because I’ve done a good job and I’ve been good to work with. The popularity and openness of the WordPress platform means that if they’re really not satisfied, they can switch to another developer reasonably easily. Very often, proprietary software and locked-in contracts are an expression of insecurity in the ultimate quality of the service being offered.
In terms of site management software, most of my eggs are in the WordPress basket. If you approach me to build a site and I don’t think WordPress is right for you, I’ll tell you. I might branch out and look into offering installations of larger-scale open source CMS’s, but for now WordPress is serving me and my clients beautifully.
Agency work
I’m usually drafted in by agencies to knock out some XHTML/CSS templates for larger companies than I work with directly. Actually, I enjoy this tremendously. In the end I prefer the feedback and rewards of building and managing whole sites for small businesses and organizations. But as a craftsperson, it’s very satisfying to go in, do the work well, and leave knowing you’ve helped the team out.
As I work at home a lot, getting to work on-site here and there is a breath of fresh air, too; sharing knowledge with my temporary colleagues often refreshes my perspectives.
Ethics
We all have to pay the rent and bills, and many (if not most) of us aren’t lucky enough to manage this through work that always makes a positive contribution to the world. However, I always try, where possible, to work with clients whose business I can square with my ethics.
So you know, top of my ethical priorities is the environment. In this, I was until fairly recently part of a “fringe” of society. Now that we all know the gravity of our situation, there’s no excuses. We don’t have to wear the hair shirts that many have always assumed environmentalism necessitates, but we do have to work hard together to reduce, reuse and recycle, and try to steer our culture towards sustainability. I believe supporting small, eco-conscious businesses and organizations with effective, affordable websites is one of the small things I can contribute.
