Portfolio

Since I'm spending quite a bit of time at work lately, I haven't had much time to spend on individual web work. The most recent stuff you'll find in "representative" works; "past" works indicate things that would look quite different if I had to do them over again; and a list of sites I have been involved in managing are at the bottom.

Representative Works

Pittsburgh Magic
http://pittsburghmagic.org/

When the organizers of the Meetup group revealed that they were having some trouble paying Meetup's exorbitant rates, I pointed out that one could host their own web site for a lot less than Meetup was charging. After discussing things with the leaders, I volunteered my time to put together a site that just might put the old Meetup page to shame.
A quick feature analysis revealed that we needed, at minimum, some sort of event-tracking application, a forum, some way to mass email people, and a main page to make it all obvious.
The tech backend for this is pretty simple. A search of freestanding event management software turned up nothing, so I focused on forum software. In a matchup between Ikonforums and phpBB, Ikonforums won out with better event management and fewer bugs in its mass-email feature.

Finding enough material for the layout was a little tricky because we didn't have a lot of content to work with. Photos are an easy filler, but I couldn't find too many good ones available, and Wizards of the Coast, purveyors of Magic: The Gathering, keep their I.P. pretty locked down. I decided that the nearest event had to be the centerpiece, and since we like getting new members, that would easily complement the design. Taking care of the regulars let me fill out the rest of the layout, with useful links in boxes at the bottom taking the role of navigation.

Past Works

User Intensive
http://www.userintensive.com/

When I decided to make a blog, there were a lot of options available. After doing some research and learning the details of several different brands of blogging software, I settled on Wordpress. The rest of the development was fairly trivial, with some modifications to the PHP and the theme.
University of Pittsburgh
Department of Physics & Astronomy
http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/

I was hired at the Department of Physics & Astronomy in late 2005 to make updates to their pre-existing webpage. However, the old layout would need a major overhaul to continue operation, and the structure made it too difficult for anyone to make even minor changes without a maximum amount of hassle.
It quickly became apparent that the biggest problem was the difficulty of keeping the site up to date, which was compounded by a relative paucity of reliable help. (The site needed to be a long-term solution, and the department has been having trouble finding enough knowledgeable students.) After meeting with many of the people who would be involved in the process, I developed a comprehensive information architecture and setup the corresponding database. After flow charting, cataloging, and site-mapping the information I was given and the pages that would be needed, I created a clean, tab-based layout that would help minimize the confusion stemming from the large amounts of widely disparate information that the site needed to contain. After laying out the site, I started work on a secure, complex back-end web application that would make database management simple and easy to understand.
After I was done with a prior project, work on this started in early 2006. In early April of 2007, the new layout went live. Although not all of the desired features have been completed due to time constraints, work continues. The department is seeing immediate results, and the core design requirement — that the site be easy for a layperson to update — has been met, as staff with no experience with web design are already using the back-end to update what is displayed on the web.
Pi Sigma Alpha, Xi Chapter
http://www.pitt.edu/~sorc/pisialph/
I was approached by the Pittsburgh chapter of the Political Science Honors Society about their website. The old version was hard to adjust, hard to read, and a complete mess. After the relevant materials and goals were figured out, the final version was put together part-time over the course of a week. The major focus of the design was simplicity, and I think it succeeds on most counts. The logo was simplified and re-rendered, the layout is much cleaner, and the code was written to be editable by someone with basic HTML skills (the server allows no scripting).
In It for the Brains!
http://www.rpgrealm.com/brains/
In mid-2005 I made the perhaps ill-advised decision to start a guild for my World of Warcraft buddies. The new guild needed a web page, and this was it. I identified the goals and the focus of the design, and with the relatively basic needs, work proceeded from there. The back-end is simple; the layout is generated dynamically with PHP, but the content itself is static. I'm also pretty happy with the layout and graphic design, although as you can tell it's not terribly flashy. If you visit the page, you might notice that I haven't had time for gaming lately.
Critical Thinking

Critical Thinking was the design I put together for my personal page in early 2006. The biggest difficulty that I had was in the information architecture. My interests aren't exactly closely related to one another, and as the site was about me, it needed to bring together many disparate ideas under one roof. This was not an easy task, and I struggled with it during my free time over the course of a month. Although I believe the design did a decent job of unifying the different elements, in the end I decided that the very idea was flawed, and the separate elements are in the process of being split up into pieces that are better suited for their individual tasks. (This site is an example.)

Sites Managed

The RPG Realm
http://www.rpgrealm.com/

Once upon a time, before I started doing real work for real people, I managed gaming websites. The RPG Realm was the most successful of those, and I guided the site through a transition away from emulation and into game reporting. There were a number of difficulties along the way, as there always are. I've managed the staff, defused legal situations, and partnered of Sony, Dreamcatcher Studios, and Bradygames (among other companies).
University of Pittsburgh Student Honors Activity Community

Upon arriving at the university, I discovered that one of the groups I had joined lacked a website. My first year in the group, the officers were very active and I had a steady stream of updates. The second year, the officers ignored the site. The lessons this experience taught me were: first, if it's not in front of them every day, people will forget about it. Secondly, an out-of-date website is worse than none at all.
Shaler Area School District

During my high school career, I had designed and managed the web site for my school district (Shaler Area, in Pittsburgh, PA). I worked directly under the school's director of technology to keep the entire site up-to-date, and deal with the myriad of issues that always come up.
Because my boss was not a computer nerd, and I was not at this point a very good designer (I didn't understand graphic design at all), there were a number of communication issues. There were also problems that arose because there was a lack of a paper trail confirming face-to-face discussions. This experience really taught me the value of good communication skills.