What I Do

Okay, here's the thing. My parents still don't quite understand what I do for a living. Most of my friends and family don't quite get it. And when I tell people at networking groups what I do, they usually look at me with a confused look on their face and ask 'Sooooo, ummmm, you mean you're a web designer?'.

I wish I could design sites! Design takes that "you either know it or you don't" sense of artistic talent that I just don't have. And I will never have it. I am not upset about that. I am proud of the skills I have, and if design isn't one of them, that's the way it goes.

No, I don't design sites. What I do is the behind-the-scenes programming. I use PHP and mySQL to create web programs. But here's the clencher. I don't create systems for online stores or general users. I create extremely specialized programs that web designers, developers and hosts can purchase at a low cost, brand (and rework or modify if desired) and then resell to their clients.

That means that I will create a script, sell it to Joe the Web Designer. He adds his flair - his own web templates (remember, I can't design!), styles, graphics, maybe even a modification or two to the PHP code. And then he sells his new and improved version of my script to his clients. His clients can now maintain their own web sites or ecommerce catalog. And yet, the end result looks like a customized site, because of the way the script works.

It's a very specialized field, and years and years of work go into the development of these scripts, which have to not only be customizable by the client, but by the reseller as well.

If that doesn't make sense, and you still don't get what I do for a living, just ask my mom. She'll tell you I'm a web designer. :)