Design versus Development
I have a lot of respect for designers and the ideas they come up with, as well as implement. However I’m not one to call myself a designer, since I lack the art school credentials.
Instead I choose to call myself a developer.
In the latest iteration of my website, I chose to use WordPress with the Elegant Grunge theme. I made this choice to emphasize my development skills versus anything that can be construed as design skills. Don’t get me wrong: I seem to have an eye for how to layout text with graphics, but I delve deeper.
In other words, I’m able to install and customize WordPress, and have done so for the past three years. As an open source web application it’s matured and has become a standard of sorts. As with any open source product, it still has bugs to be ironed out and areas to be fine tuned. In the meantime, it works well for small to medium sized websites. Also you can do some nice mash-ups via plugins, embeddings, and widgets.
For the most part, I want the content to speak for itself. Since I am a writer, the majority of the content on this site will be in text. I also work towards giving my clients stricter controls over the content of their sites. Aside from it being a cost-effective solution, it gives my clients the peace of mind to know that they can maintain a dynamic web presence.
Finally, I can always refer you to a good designer in case you’re curious.