Web Design and Development

One of the sites I worked on in the last month or so has launched. The Ann Arbor Board of Realtors were looking to redesign their current site and Inner Circle Media was the firm that they felt would do it right. Luckily this was while I was working in their office and they graciously let me do the front-end development for the project.

I loved creating this site, its a great design especially compared to the other Realtor web sites that I have seen when googling to check out the competition. Not only was the design the reason I loved creating this site, but because of the fact I was able to create it as a flexible width layout. Throughout my freelance career the designers have always created fixed width designs but I felt that this site could be created flexible and not have any serious issues with the design and the great people at Inner Circle were all for it. The site is also built with Ruby on Rails and Inner Circle even created a custom content management system, so the board can easily update their site content and it gives them a lot of cool modules that make it a great data driven site.

They told me that the Board of realtor’s all over the country have a competition each year for who has the best website, hopefully with such a great design, use of great front-end techniques and such a powerful back-end based on rails will put the Ann Arbor Board of Realtors at the top of the list.

Well, its been a while since I have posted on a regular basis. Hopefully in the next couple of weeks that will change, but I have been transitioning into a new full time job as the lead front-end developer at Niche Retail, an ecommerce company that has about 18 different niche product sites.

I will be involved with many things including bringing the sites up to date with standards, which looks like its going to be a long process since it’s 18 or so sites. I will also be involved with more then just the coding but also be involved with the whole development process including new innovative ideas, usability, interaction design and all that great stuff.

It was my first week and I have already met with all the executives and checked out the main warehouse. We even already had a company party playing whirly ball, so yeah its been a big week for me. The development team is just three of us located in a small office in Ann Arbor Michigan while the main headquarters is located in Sylvan Lake Michigan. The work environment is very laid back and everyone is really nice. This is the type of job I have been waiting for and hope to do some great things.