Warning: preg_replace() [function.preg-replace]: Compilation failed: this version of PCRE is not compiled with PCRE_UTF8 support at offset 0 in /var/www/funnylookinhat.com/wp-includes/shortcodes.php on line 213

I’ve been doing web development on a professional level for several years now, and I’ve been programming for much longer than that. The funny thing is, I have never once worked for a legitimate company doing anything in this field. All of the jobs I picked up were referrals from previous clients, word of mouth, web 2.0 (i.e. tweetering the facespace), and craigslist gigs. I finally got myself a real job this summer and am working for a web start up called WellcomeMat (www.wellcomemat.com). It’s definitely exciting; there are a lot of changes being made to the website and major shifts in the direction of our revenue sales. In fact, we just released what I have been working on for the past two weeks, what I’ve started called Phase 2 of their Web User Interface.

Before I came to WellcomeMat this summer, the website was setup to run themselves primarily as a content distributor, not a hub for content creators and customers. For everyone to win at this game of local video, we need clients to be hiring professional film-makers for quality short movies while providing a robust and malleable means of content delivery. WellcomeMat had all of those things together, except that it didn’t show the public anything of what it did. I would estimate that over 90% of the users on the website were using it because they were directly referred to it (or even sold on it as a free product) by WellcomeMat’s co-founders. We have since moved on.

Here are three screen-shots of the legacy website (See below).

The first two screens are of the default website. The third file shows what happened if you clicked a video. It felt closed and secluded, claustrophobic even, and certainly didn’t provide any sort of method for users to crawl the content of the website.

In comes Phase 2!

Feel more connected? More interactive? I sure hope so! We have a great designer who put some real time and effort into figuring out how to wrap all of this content together while not making the site feel too big. I was lucky enough to have someone who gave me very specific wireframes and colors so that I could simply code up exactly what I saw. I’m not an artist at all, but I certainly am a great programmer and copier!

So what do you think? Good stuff? I’m really excited for where this is going, definitely lots of room to grow and ideas to explore.