Since we have closed our web development business, South Platte Web Design, we thought we would take the opportunity to use this domain name for a good purpose: Web development tutorials, tips, tricks and techniques. All of which reflect modern design principles, standards and ideologies.

When I say we, you have to understand that my wife and I were business partners, creating web sites, building and selling PCs and performing IT related activities. Really, it will be myself posting on here. This blog is merely an attempt to do a brain dump of what I have learned in the past few years, what I thought I had learned in the past few years and what I hope can be useful to the readers. I do not do this for money, though I may have an occasional paid post here or there, along with some simple monetizing efforts such as Adsense and other affiliate ads. I am writing more to share what knowledge I can, with anyone who may need it.

The focus will try to remain true to validated HTML/XHTML and CSS based design, and hopefully some features that will help you along in your web development journeys. Feel free to leave comments and to link to the blog posts, interaction is welcome and encouraged.

About Bill:

I am a full time web developer who manages three complete web sites for a company in Colorado. My duties have included designing the layouts from scratch, developing the backend databases, interfacing with legacy CRM/Order management software, working with data in various formats, normalizing it and presenting it in an effective way, as well as performing system admin duties on the only Linux server in the enterprise.

The first week on the job, I spec’ed out a new laptop, ordered it and started installing my arsenal of tools. The second week on the job, I spec’ed out a server, ordered it and set it up from scratch with custom installations of Apache, PHP, MySql and a few other tools I use. I have reworked all three web sites at least once in the past 1.5 years I have been with the company, and am currently converting an ASP site that is hosted by a third party into a PHP/MySQL based site, that will still interface with a legacy application. My upcoming project includes connecting to and using an Oracle database that powers our ERP system to retrieve product and inventory information.

In the spare time I don’t have, I enjoy the occasional video game, play role-playing games such as AD&D and Shadorun, and of course, my favorite hobby at this time playing paintball.