Previous work

I've been designing web sites since 1995 for clients of all types, ranging from individual home-based businesses to Microsoft. I've been doing print publishing even longer than that.

No job is too small or too large for me. Tell me what you want for an online or offline presence and I will create it.

Here's a sampling of my work.

Content Management Systems

A "content management system" is an advanced type of web site similiar to what a newspaper might have. It's designed to give a group of people powerful publishing capabilities without having to know much about web technology. These kinds of sites allow people to post stories which are automatically formatted to fit the site's look. These stories may or may not allow comments from users. The Globe and Mail's site is an example of a content management system, as is the local radio station CD98.9's site.

If you want the ability to rapidly update your site by yourself, and you don't want to mess around with HTML, FTP servers, and such, this is the way to go. This is also the best way to make your own blog if you don't want to use one of the generic blogging services. These kinds of sites are highly extensible and often include additional advanced features such as message forums, event calendars, and photo galleries.

Here are some examples of content management systems I've done lately.

Costs of content management systems

I typically charge $1250 to $2500 for a content management site, depending upon how much custom programming or other additional work is required.

Here's the best case scenario: you hand me a CD with all the documents and photos you want to initially appear on the site. You don't need to worry about document formats or photo sizes. You also give me any print media advertising you've done previously so I can lift your logo, branding colours, and anything else I can use from it. If you do this, and you don't require any additional components like shopping carts, message forums, or any custom programming, the project will cost you $1250 plus the purchase of my basic hosting package, which costs $100 per year. After the site is finished you would only have to pay $100 each year to renew your web hosting.

Here's the worst case scenario. You can't decide on a domain name and keep changing your mind after I've purchased one for you. You don't know what you want to say on your site and want me to write everything for you. You don't like what I wrote, so you keep requesting revisions. You need me to take all the photographs for the site, and I need to travel to take the photos. You don't have a logo, and want me to design one for you. You need extensive additional components, like a fully featured shopping site with catalogues and credit card processing. You want me to program some cool gadgets which no one has ever seen on a web site before. And after I do all these things, you decide you've changed your mind about the look and want a complete redesign.

Now don't get me wrong, I can do all of those things for you and I don't mind doing them. I'm here to make your life easier. But if a great deal of such additional work is required, it adds to the cost of your web site. The more precise you are with what you need for a project, the more accurate my quote will be. Changing requirements will result in changing quotes. As long as that's ok with you, it's ok with me.

Brochure sites

Brochure sites are what you might think of as "normal" web sites. They aren't as easily modified as content management systems and require someone with a working knowledge of web technologies to update them. These sites usually don't have databases or other advanced functions attached to them, but they can if required. I call these sites "brochure sites" because they're basically like brochures for an individual, company, or cause.

There's a few differences between a web site and a brochure, though. The most important is that you can pack a huge amount of information into a web site, far more than you'd ever want to include in a printed brochure, and you can also include interactive content such as links, email, work estimate calculators, or whatever else you need to get your point across.

Another critical difference between a web site and any form of print advertising is cost. Once the site is designed, you've got a permanent advertisement with global reach that only costs you $100 per year. You'd pay a newspaper more than that for a single ad the size of a business card which only runs one day and reaches a few thousand people at best.

Here's a few examples of brochure sites I've done:

Costs of brochure sites

These kinds of sites generally cost from $500 to $1000, depending on the same factors as the cost of content management systems. That is, if you give me documents and photos ready to go, and don't need me to do custom programming, credit card processing, logo design, copy editing, and so on, I'll just charge you $500 for the design plus $100 to host your site for a year. Additional features, or large numbers of documents, cost more.

Microsites

Sometimes people just need a minimal web presence. Maybe they want to secure a domain name for a future project and just need a placeholder site for now. Maybe they want what amounts to an online business card, just to get their names and businesses into search engines.

For clients like these I just make a very simple, single page site and charge them $50 - $100 for the design plus the purchase of my basic web hosting package, which costs $100 per year. For less than $200 in total you could have a simple web site hosted on your own domain with unlimited customized email addresses. This is a fantastic way to start any project. And you can always upgrade to a brochure site quickly and easily once you need it.

Examples of microsites I've done:

Other web-related projects

I've also used web technologies while developing software. Here's a few examples.

Microsoft Application Center 2000 Resource Kit

I produced the CD for Microsoft's Application Center 2000 Resource Kit. Application Center 2000 was a software suite designed to set up and maintain large clusters of web servers. The Resource Kit was a separately sold package consisting of a reference manual with an accompanying CD of utilities. These utilities would augment the original installation of Application Center in various ways.

I was responsible for just about all aspects of the CD. I worked with Microsoft developers to redesign their software (19 major tools and 18 scripts) to make it more robust and useful with special attention given to improving user interfaces. I edited and formatted all of the digital documentation for the resource kit. I designed the structure of the CD and used InstallShield to create all setup files.

Here is a compiled HTML help file I made for this project. It contains HTML versions of the readme.txt files I wrote for each individual tool and also demonstrates my ability to provide fully packaged documentation. Depending on your security settings, you might have to save it and then open it rather than open it directly. If you're running Windows 7, it won't display anything unless you take the trouble to unblock it. It would seem that compiled HTML is a thing of the past, which is too bad because it was an interesting way to put an entire web site into a single file.

Other projects for Microsoft

I wrote the tour for Internet Explorer 5.5 and made the Internet Explorer help files for Windows Millenium Edition.

Fortunes of War

Fortunes of War was a turn-based strategic wargame set in ancient times. It was produced by a game company in Ottawa called "Webwars Inc." which ceased publishing around the turn of the millenium.

I was the lead designer for this project. The game rules were entirely my creation and I wrote and formatted all game documentation. I also managed the teams of beta testers, scenario designers, and artists.

Fortunes was a pretty nifty game if I do so say so myself. It was based on the time period of approximately 1000 B.C. to 400 A.D. Each player would choose a nation based upon five nation archetypes -- Rome, Carthage, Germanic Tribes, Parthia, or Macedon. They would then marshal their armies, direct their spies, manage their economy, keep an eye on their generals (which were semi-autonomous and prone to treachery) and attempt to manipulate other players through diplomacy and deceit.

Each turn the game would take every command and message a player entered and compress them into a single small file which was then sent to the central game servers. The servers would then takes all players' commands and execute them simultaneously. It would then mail the results back to each player with another small file. The game would take this file and and use it to update that player's game world on his local machine.

It was a game that was ahead of its time in many ways. Unfortunately it couldn't be played without a central server. Webwars went bankrupt due to gross malfeasance on the part of its directors, an all-too common story from the dot.com days. This effectively killed the game, but not before it had gathered highly positive reviews from several gaming periodicals such as Hotgames and had been made a featured download of the day at Happy Puppy, one of the world's most popular software sites.

That's all, folks

The above should give you some idea of what I can do. Email me at will@guardiancomputing.com or call me at (519) 582-3936 if you think I can be of use to you.