John Hacking: Web Developer

18Nov07

Hey guys, it’s been a hell of a long time since I’ve posted anything, but it’s also been a long time since I was any kind of active in the web design and development community, so when I stumbled across this guy’s website today and was briefly reading through some of his lengthy, informative and useful pages of suggestions and information about his company, I thought “why not feature him on the JDB blog?” So that’s what I’m doing.

John Hacking is a Brisbane, Australia-based web designer and developer, using CMSs (content management systems) as often as possible. He says of his methods that he “train my clients to use the CMS so that they can make small changes themselves.
This saves them time and money and differentiates me from my competitors.” A good idea, to be sure, of aiding the customer in not only receiving their desired site but in giving them the knowledge to modify and comfortably change and add things themselves as their sites move through time. He also provides an almost comic relief sketch of Brisbane, the city he’s grown up in, and all the things he loves about the area. I was happy to stumble across this personal aspect of a web developer who obviously does some simple but effective stuff, based on the screenshots on his home page. He also offers the standard but useful contact and FAQ links about his site, as well as pricing information and a nice search function. Accompanying this, though, are plenty of articles on web design and development, as well as a list of the “18 Common Web Design Mistakes” or “(Where people often go wrong with their web site).” And the coolest part of this is the fact that he doesn’t approach it from a designer’s point of view, he uses ideas from a common e-business perspective to critique what people often do wrong on their websites. Things like “Foggy or undefined business goals” and “A Bad Business Model” are great things to address, as well as things like the site’s domain name and “Not thinking like a customer,” a great technique to use when developing an e-business site.

With many aspiring web developers/e-business entrepreneurs out there today, this site is not only useful in terms of a means to get their site done on time, but it offers plenty of resources for the average Joe to read through and apply to their own site in an effort to further improve the effectiveness of their business idea. It’s definitely worth checking out, whether you’re looking for a company to get your boss’s site done sooner than you can yourself, or just looking for some advice on developing your own e-business and the site to give it an international face. Best of luck to you developers, and thanks to John Hacking for providing this kind of resource, I’ve been wanting to go out to Australia quite a bit recently, and this has only increased that desire, due to his love of Brisbane. Thanks for that, John . The rest of you, enjoy the site.

Link: http://www.johnhacking.com/

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