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When
I made the decision to build an entirely new website to
replace PARKERS, it
wasn't an easy one to come by: PARKERS
had, after all, served me well for four years, doubling
as both a showcase for my work, and an outlet for my frustrations
during my year of shoulder rehabilitation in 1998. It
was designed to accommodate massive growth over the years,
which it did, and stand the test of time, which it also
did to a fair degree. So why rebuild at all?
When I graduated from SMU in 2000, I found myself at the
tail-end of the dot.com boom, and immediately moved to
Austin to begin work as a full-time web designer at a
growing real estate company. For a while, the job was
great: I was being paid to do what I loved doing for free.
But as the months went by, I became increasingly aware
that I was essentially performing the same tasks again
and again, and the time allowed for developing new skills
and learning new software, so essential for those in a
technology-related field, was becoming less and less important
to management. I found that the company's stringent and
outdated web standards guide stifled my creativity, and
so I began using evenings at home to continue my pursuit
of expanding my skillset, using PARKERS
as a conduit through which my creativity flowed. When
I was forbidden to show my work from home to my fellow
coworkers, my desire to continue working there faded.
It had long been my plan to work for two years in the
field before pursuing my Masters in Graduate School, and
after I had served my two years with the company, the
decision to tend my resignation was easy.
It was also the best decision I could have made. I am
now pursuing my Masters at the University of Texas (Hook'em
Horns!), and, in addition, have used these months to their
absolute fullest, not only learning every piece of software
I could get my hands on, but also touring the United States
with my friends on roadtrips down both the East and West
Coasts and back. It has been an exciting time!
My decision to build DOUBLEPARKER, then, was to put some
of these new skills to the test and create a database-driven
website using many of the techniques I was unable to use
before. DP is built almost entirely of layers and cascading
style sheets, with search engines and pages populated
by data that required me to learn Mysql and PHP to communicate
with the databases. The site has plenty of room to grow,
and can update itself with minimal effort on my part.
It even stays fresh though the usage of randomly changing
images, such as the picture at the top of this page, and
the movie posters bookending the boxoffice at the DP Theater.
At this point in time, DP is in its first release phase.
This phase contains only the PERSONAL site, with the PROFESSIONAL
site being the next phase (scheduled for release in early
June). It is compatible only in Internet Explorer at this
time, while I explore ways to display the same techniques
in less-popular browsers such as Netscape and Opera. In
the end, DP will have been the most involved website I
have ever created, and I hope that you will continue to
watch its growth over the years, taking enjoyment from
the many original features offered only though DP, and
maybe even making a submission of your own in the future
:)
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