Website Design Portfolio

Rocka's is the name I use to trade under has a freelance web designer developer. I am a guy in his mid forties who has been a professional musician since the age of 15, not many people can survive being a musician for that length of time without the creative ability to re invent themselves over and over again. I gained interest in web design after making a web site for one of the bands I played with. I added to the knowledge by doing a Open University course coving XHTML, XML, CSS, PHP, JavaScript, SQL, Coldfusion and ASP.

Every 'html or css' page or file I have created is validated by the W3C standards, i.e. each page will have a W3C passed icon posted in the footer. These icons are linked to the W3C validater; clicking on the icon allows you to check that this page passes W3C standards. W3C standards can have limations on some html tags but overall there are many advantages, including improved cross browser accessibility and reduced download times.

I am a guy in his mid forties, a teenager at heart that's always been creative. I have been in the music industry since leaving school at age 15 after been signed to a publishing and record deal. Over the years I have worked on both sides of the industry, as a musician and in production running my own company. Nevertheless after years of fateful service I lacked the security of a stable income, after gaining interest in web design during building a band web site I decided on a change of career direction was in order.

Over the last three years I have studied web development online at the Open University towards the qualification Certificate in Web Applications Development.  
The course is divided into six subjects Html, Xhtml, Css, Php, Sql, JavaScript, Coldfusion and Asp. I have also learnt Flash/Action Script and have experience in using web tools Dreamweaver 8, Fireworks 8,Flash 8 Photoshop.
Other OU course I have completed is Vandalism in cyberspace: Understanding and combating malicious software.

A musician from leaving school, I played with many top bands and have had a hit record, been on TV and toured the world. In later years I moved on to work on the production side.

I worked at John Henry's as a tour manager/sound engineer.

I ran my own production company, Rock Mobiles. This boomed from a small company with one van to a fleet of five vans in the first two years but unfortunately I had to sell on after my silent partner needed to pull out taking all his investment with him. I went back to being a musician playing with various bands including 'The Godfathers' who before starting 'To Bob', a Dylan Tribute band.

It was from a desire to create a site for my band 'To Bob' that my present career arose. The 'To Bob' site can be found at 'www.tobob.co.uk'. Since then I have built many web sites. Currently to gain experience in shopping applications I am designing a fully working mock shopping site. I decided to base my site style on the site of my old employer John Henry's Pro Shop for two reasons, one he may well open online shopping at a latter date, two as his site uses frames it is a fair challenge. At present I have no web space with php and mysql facilities to display my shopping applications. If you would like to see a shopping application built by myself and you have your own localhost server with php and sql facilities download this folder named Shop**. In this folder there is a mysql file and a folder named site for the html files, scripts and images. You will need to copy the sql file into your sql server and upload the other files into htdocs if the server is Apache or into the root folder for all other servers.

Hand Coding: I can hand code or debug files written in a multitude of development languages using notepad, i.e. without the help of Dreamweaver or cutting and pasting from libraries. I can also edit and create flash files using action script.

I have only just started to trade under the name of Rockas from Jan.2007 so Clients come from word and mouth only. To date some of my early Clients are Starrz a band whom I built a basic 10 page site and is still under construction. Also I designed a site from scratch with over 70 pages for my old stable mates the Godfathers. I also finished this site under a deadline of two weeks before there Euro Tour started. You can view this site at Godfathers.com.