The poll results are in, web development it is

I’ll say right here, right now, this wasn’t the topic I was expecting at all. I thought for sure that more people would respond to the make money, or random crap selections in the poll than web development would.

And that’s exactly why I did the poll, because I’ve had my head so far up my own ass, that I don’t even know about the people following me.

Oh wait, you mean to say that you don’t even know who’s following you?  Well, in that case I won’t trip on it then.

So, this year is going to be different.  This year, you’re going to get more of me and my personality, which I’ve always tried to keep at bay at fear of scaring people away.  But after a few years of getting comfortable with the idea of letting complete strangers into my life, I find I’m more willing to open up and let more out than I have in prior years.

I actually want to share, because quite frankly, between you me and the Internet, I have secrets, lots of secrets, and some are just itching to get out and be heard.

No, all my ex-girlfriends and current girlfriends are quite safe.  No dirty talk on this blog or dropping tales of my misadventures with women, that’s for the other sites.  No, here you’ll get more of me and all the web development knowledge I can throw at you, along with a healthy portion of crap that falls out of my head.

Setting some goals for this year

I was thinking about what I might do, this year, as a goal.  I always like to have goals, for each year.  Last year I set out to establish a portfolio of domains that I feel are going to do some good work for me, and I also wanted to learn PHP.  I have a good base of domains that I can continue to work with and improve, as well,  I now know enough PHP to be a danger to myself and others, and that all I really need to know.

What I find interesting is that PHP is really no different than classic ASP, at least that what I see in the many sample applications I’ve been through.  It was reassuring once I made that realization since I hail from classic ASP.  The transition to PHP really involved learning the syntax, and that’s about it.

If you don’t know the difference between PHP and classic ASP, or are wondering what the hell they even are, don’t worry.  That’s not important right now, but if you’re so inclined, a quick Google search will tell you all you want to know about these two “programming” languages.  I quote that since I wouldn’t call them languages…more like scripting in my opinion.

I also think I recall stating that I wanted to make my first $1000 last year, and sure as shit, I get a nearly $2000 month.  Whodathunkit?  I sure didn’t, and I have David to thank for making it possible.

So this year I was thinking that I might encompass a few areas.  I wanted to build a website last year and document it, but that never happened unfortunately.  If anyone was looking forward to that last year, this might be your year.  I’ve been working on building an architecture for web sites, one that will allow you to put a website together in a snap, as simple as WordPress (perhaps not nearly as fancy looking, you might have seen the stick-figures I drew in Not An Artist Monthly), and flexible enough to meet certain criteria.  Namely, search engine ranking.

The system or site that I’m trying to construct will have the following characteristics when I’m done with it:

• Be easy to set up, even for a newbie
• Be flexible to accommodate various keyword groups and keyword sub-groupings
• Automatically tailor itself to be SEO prepared based on the keywords provided
• Allow for easy content manipulation and generation.
• Provides value by allowing for unique content as well as relevant mash-ups from across the Internet
• Makes money for the owner
• Requires little owner involvement
• Costs little to get started
• Not become a spam site engine (there might be only a few copies of my system that I’ll sell, so the price might be a bit high for the everyday person or spammer)

This will keep me busy on and off through the year, and I hope to have something ready by mid-summer.  Perhaps the first alpha or beta release, which will only be handed out to a few individuals.  Once I release this system into the wild, I’ll have to support it as well, so I want to make sure that it’s as tight as it can be.

Lol, last thing I want is to be providing support for a shoddy product, so I’m more than willing to take my time on this and build a solid product.

While I’m doing that development, I’ll provide updates here as things progress.

Web Development Ideas

So on to you, and why you come here.  It seems the majority of you want to see more on web development, and so  it will be.  I’m working on an outline for a complete training course that I’ll let you in on after I’ve had some time to develop it further.

Given there is going to be an wide variety of existing knowledge that you’ll most likely have, some posts will be more advanced, while some will be built for beginners in mind.  Overall, I hope the mix will satisfy everyone’s needs.

If you have some specific thoughts as to what you want to learn this year, here’s the place to let me know.  I’ll come back to this post for ideas left by you in the comments area below.

I’m looking forward to this year, and feel energized and ready to go!  Hope you feel the same!

Cheers!

Wayne

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