BogeyWebDesign.com

Welcome to the home of BogeyWebDesign.com. This site is currently designed as a portfolio site for it’s designer. Though I am taking on smaller projects to add to my growing portfolio, I am not currently accepting any major site designs.

This site is open source – so feel free to steal the design, though preferably with a link back to my site – as well as all of the templates. All are designed using CSS & XHTML and standards based design practices. This means the site will be leaner, download faster, be more optimized for search engines naturally and easy to update even for those that do not have web design skills. You can contact me if you wish for a design change to one of the templates or help on setting them up – however if I do modify one of my templates for your site I reserve the right to showcase the new template here and on open source web design template sites.

On the right you will find links to my templates, sites I have done and several lists from my del.icio.us. You do have to have javascript enabled in order to view the del.icio.us links. Finally, although this site will display in IE 6 fine, for the best view and browsing experience please choose a standards compliant browser – Opera or Firefox.

Why Web Standards?

Internet users have many options when it comes to their web browser. In the past, the solution to this problem was to generate multiple versions of the same site and determine the browser beforehand in order to serve up the correct iteration. This was both expensive and time consuming. The past few years have seen the rise of CSS & XHTML based designs – giving companies, groups and organizations an easier option. By designing their sites using these tools, they are able to generate sites that are cleaner, use less markup, are easier to update and are semantically correct. A beneficial side effect to this is the fact that their site’s search engine optimization (SEO) improves greatly because search engine spiders are better able to read their site.

What are some further benefits to utilizing a standards compliant website?

• Your pages will be smaller because all of the aesthetic markup will be removed. This results in faster load times to your clients – meaning happier clients for you. It also means less bandwidth and space is used on your hosting service – meaning lower cost for your monthly hosting.
• Future updates will be significantly easier. Your markup will be cleaner and not based upon table based designs so that you can easily find and edit your content.
• You have the ability to serve up multiple styles for your site. Not only can you make your site more accessibly by making it easier for text readers, audio browsers and handheld/mobile devices – but you can also allow your users to choose the style they prefer, my site being an example of this. Finally, you can serve up different variations with small changes to the markup – a good example being ESPN.com who by adding a small tag to the body can vary between a normal story header to a full above the fold design. You can offer more options to your users and more flexibility to yourself with minimal work.

About the Designer

I am a graduate of UMass–Lowell with a Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science who has been programming since 1998 in one way, shape or form. My original love of programming started with HTML and then proceeded on through – in some level or another – C, C++, Javascript, Lexx, Yacc, CSS, and XHTML.

Why BogeyWebDesign.com? Bogey was the first of my ferrets to pass away. He was also the youngest. Bringing ferrets into my home is something that I will always remember, as well as something that added value to my life. I learned almost as much from them as they did from me. When I tried to think of a name for my design company I centered my process on the things that meant the most to me. Though it took time to realize what the answer was, in the end it was worth it.