Owner at BucketSoft
Macon, GA
I'm sorry I'm not currently taking on any new work as I have a full-time job that keeps me busy as well as products to support and maintain.
I've been writing code for 27 years, and I've been building websites professionally for the last 21 of those years. During that time I've worked for a lot of small companies and been a part of small development teams. The interesting thing about my career so far is that I've been given the opportunity to be a part of every step of the process involved in building great websites. And I've gained appreciation for design, usability, marketing, and SEO as well as the more technical side of website coding and database design. But through all of that, one particular interest rose above everything else; that is, the need to create websites that are fast and highly scalable.
You may wonder why I care so much about performance. Consider this:
I work primarily with the Microsoft stack of technologies and have done so since 2001. These are efficient technologies and I'm very efficient with my coding practices. So you probably won't need a costly server setup to begin with. There's also the option of using Windows Azure, and their rates are reasonable for what you get.
From prototyping to design to final coding.
Scalability is an interesting concept. One concern is that it's in the very nature of some websites to receive a surge of traffic at an unexpected time. So a website may not actually need a massive amount of server resources most of the time. But when it does, the server better be ready to handle it or you'll miss out on a lot of traffic, and a lot of potential business. I can work with you here to come up with something that'll work well for your scenario. Sometimes the most important thing is that you have an easy path laid out in front of you to handle the growth.
Mobile devices still have serious issues with latency. As such, it's more important than ever to minimize the number of requests (or files) that your website serves to mobile users. There's also a different set of requirements to make a mobile site feel natural and easy to use. I can build something that'll respond quickly and look great on a mobile device.
Identifying bottlenecks.
In the past this has been an area that was frequently overlooked. By using simple techniques like CSS sprites, cookieless domains, GZIP compression, and caching you can drastically improve page load times. But I won't stop there. I'll pull out every trick in the book to minimize requests and latency and make your site faster than you ever thought possible.
Solving performance problems at the server is all about measuring real-world usage and finding bottlenecks. There are a variety of tools I like to use to uncover these bottlenecks. Once found, the solutions can vary. Sometimes implementing a new caching strategy is a good solution. Sometimes it's a matter of applying the proper indexes to a database table. Or, there's simply a more efficient way to write the code.
It depends. I've worked on some projects where I was able to make the site just 25% faster, and others as much as 300% faster. Most of the time the biggest improvements come from front-end optimizations but of course every site is different.
No, that's my specialty and everything I create is fast. And I would say that I'm a .NET developer first and foremost but I'm also well versed in design, usability, and search engine optimization.
I tend to be booked for a month or two in advance but don't be deterred. I'd still love to hear from you.
It's the best. Web development requires a tremendous breadth of skills to do well. These are the skills I've acquired over a long career. [Oh no, I'm beginning to sound like Liam Neeson.] My point is, I'll work closely with you to understand exactly what you need and what you hope to achieve. And then I can create something great on the first try.
You do. Before I work, we'll put a contracting agreement in place that will assign ownership of all work product and deliverables to you. As I work I'll also keep the code in a shared repository so that if I get hit by a bus you'll still have it.
Once I know a little more about the project, I can give you an estimate. The first step is to get in touch.
Interested? Send me an email at steve@bucketsoft.com.