Early days.
Site in set-up so please bear with me. I’m also building two other websites at this time to break up my content and I have a personal WordPress project ongoing which involves creating a completely new WordPress theme which I haven’t done before. So I’m a busy chap.
Please read on. I blog about my day to day activities around web development and general technology issues I may have, and about the achievements. You will see posts where the I also blog about the places I visit and add photographs to enhance the experience so please join me on my journey and check out the blog posts on the right.
Over the next few weeks I will separate my journey blogging from my tech blogging but I will notify you of the new location and add a web page link to the menu. All content is loaded to all social Networks and I would like to add I visit Facebook very very rarely.
Building websites
I also build websites and with 25 years experience in IT related subjects as well as a lot more expertise in sales, manufacturing, distribution and a lot more I can help you in many more ways. I have for instance 10 years SQL expertise including RDBMS Admin, 10 years MRP and MRP support and project management experience. I have have ‘played’ wit just about every Platform out there, tried every single Photo editing suite. Been measured as an ‘Expert’ with all MS Office apps though I use OpenOffice.
Photography and Videography
My key interest is photography which can be found at PhillipDonnelly-Photgraphy.co.uk (currently linked to this website and my blog posts) and downloadable content soon using my F28media.co.uk domain. Let me add that the majority of images anywhere on my website are created by me including the little Cue 80’s Music Logo below which links to my test/play domain. I’m also creating a WP Theme based on that sites content as my first coded WP Theme.
I’m also transferring a Website originally created in 2013 as an exercise in website production, that site pushed a few boundaries for me at the time and I broke a few rules in getting there. Coded in HTML and CSS and later migrated to a BootStrap structure for a fully flexible mobile first website. And now I’m building WordPress theme around that website.
At this time I’m busy constructing this website but to be clear phillipdonnelly.co.uk is my tech website, phillipdonnelly-photography.co.uk will be the photography site and F28media.co.uk will be commercial photography. I’m also working on another project to migrate one of my website to WordPress and there is a post relating to that, and the experience I get from installing it locally while I turn it into a WP Theme. As you can imagine this is a lot of work and all that work is being done by me. Which is why everything is so slow, hopefully I’ll get it all finished before I die.
Let me add that WP is hard work! Everything there is built using HTML and CSS3 using PHP, both of which I know. PHP pages are served from a server which then sends the content to your browser. With WordPress, which has a basic configuration supported by a global community, there are so many WP add ons called Plugins and all have a pro version which is not FREE. I try to use all the Free to use Plugins so that means my site, this site may not have all the flashy stuff yet.
I could build this site from scratch using PHP, HTML, CSS and plenty of JavaScript which would in fact be much easier for me. I would use the Bootstrap Framework which provides the structure for flexible websites and which works perfectly with the WP framework. I started using the Dallas Framework (mobile friendly) about 10 years ago but Bootstrap has replaced that. But so many now use WP and with so much (user friendliness, what, did I say that, do you believe that! ). WP ropes you in to this quick and dirty DIY website process but most people have not got the first idea about any of it, believe me. Use an out of the box WP Theme if you must but after that you’re just scratching the surface. SEO, Images and image editing with alt tags, slugs and hyperlinks using Self, _Blank, _Parent, Top, Bottom. Pixels, EM and Percentage uses most people haven’t got the time. Button design placement sizing, colouring, gradients, padding basically all the CSS you can think of and more. If you don’t know what you’re doing you’re heading into the arms of a developer.
It took me years to get to where I am now
And I’ve eventually given in to WordPress. My arms are open. And I hardly make any money from all that I know. Just to clarify a WordPress plugin is PHP, HTML, CSS and scripting such as JavaScript which simply “Slots in” to the WordPress website code.
The same can be said for Website applications provided by all hosting providers, you can produce a simple website yourself but then you’re building a website that you direct people too, not a website that has a high ranking, you will inevitably need the support of a pro and that’s why a FREE website exists. So to clarify, you have to decide if your time is more or less valuable than a web developers time, then you decide if you need professional support.
Incidentally I bought my last website for £0.0, a co.uk domain, I own around 15 of them. I have 6 months of WP hosting for £1.00. I don’t pay for extras UNLESS I REALLY HAVE TO. And that’s is also how we make our living. In this case it’s not who you know it’s what you know.
