Why Garth should design, develop, maintain, and promote your web site

I have a unique combination of skills which make me well qualified to create wonderful, profitable web sites. These skills include:

HTML/CSS/PHP coding skills: I hand code clean, standards compliant HTML, CSS, and PHP. This is the first line of defense against sites which only work on certain devices.
Search engine optimization skills: What's the point of launching a beautiful new site if nobody can find it on Google or the other search engines? I'll make sure that your site is structured for search engine indexing, has original content, and a solid base of other sites pointing links at it.
My own easily-customizable framework: While the web is full of bloated website-in-a-box abominations, I use my own sleek framework. I've designed it to be owner-maintainable, so once it's set up you can add new products, images, and events, or update your text, or add new pages, or perform a number of other maintenance tasks without calling me and scheduling another job.
Aesthetic sensibilities: Through many years of nature photography and considerable graphic design training, I have acquired an excellent sense of composition, balance, harmony, and color.
Graphics and text software skills: I have a detailed working knowledge of Photoshop, Illustrator, and various page layout and word processing programs. This enables me to convert your ideas or your existing print document to a functional web site efficiently.
Photographic background: The low resolution of web graphics is often used as an excuse for sloppy photography. In fact, the web allows good photography to look good while making bad photography look even worse. My skills in various styles of photography, ye olde darkroom work, and digital imagery enable me to take excellent photos for your site or make the most of your photographs and get the most bang for your bandwidth.
Social Networking: The rapidly-changing world of social media can be bewildering. I can help build your presence on Facebook, Youtube, and other sites.
English language skills: I have a remarkable facilitude with the english language. I've like graduated from collej and stuff like that. My speling and grammer is impeccable, I strive to never ever under any circumstances split an infinitive, my subjects and verbs always agrees, I wouldn't never use no double negatives, of cource I'd wouldn't even conceive of writing a sentence that just went on and on and on and on, cuz those are really hard to figure out, they are called "run on sentences" and I never ever use them cuz that would be wrong, and of course I've never found a preposition that it's appropraite to end a sentence with.
Seriously, the web is a writer’s medium. The spiffiest visual design in the world will get you nowhere if your text is plagiarized, borrowed, confusing, illiterate, or unorganized. I can edit your text and give you advice to make it web-friendly and ensure correct grammar, spelling, and usage.
~~I work cheap~~ Reasonable Rates: ~~I'm used to starving~~. Actually, I've had quite enough of starving, thank you very much. But I can still put together a complete site, from conception through design, photography, development, posting, and publicity for less than you imagine. Well, less than you fear, anyway.

Some of my web projects:

I have worked on many web sites in various capacities. Often, I build new sites from the ground up. Other times, I take over maintenance of existing sites or re-build existing sites. Sometimes I work as a specialist on one aspect of a site. These sites represent a wide range of my web work.

University Press Audiobooks: Professionally produced audiobook editions of important works by some of today's greatest minds. This site's database and backend scripts are configured to easily set up more specialized sub-sites, like Progressive Audiobooks, Military Audiobooks, and Teachers' Audiobooks.
Bored Feet Press: Bored Feet is a publisher, retailer, and distributor of books and maps. The original version of this site was one of my very first websites, dating back to 1998. I've recently re-designed and re-built it using responsive HTML5.
Crown Hall of Mendocino: Owner maintainable site, built on my new Redpark Framework, for a large rental hall in Mendocino.
Shirley Brice Heath: Another Redpark site, this one covers the work of noted scholar S.B. Heath.
Listen to Genius: A large library of free, professionally produced podcasts from the works of history's greatest writers. Includes a custom RSS feed.
Karen Muller, PhD: A small site for a southern Oregon clinical psychologist who happens to be my sister.
Under the Table Books: The works of novelist and musician Todd Walton. A pre-existing site which I've thoroughly recombobulated. I've added a shopping cart, updated the author's projects, improved navigation and search engine optimization, and installed a WordPre
Navarro River Music: The music of Marcia Sloane. I re-worked an existing site with a new look and new content.
Navarro-by-the-Sea-Center: History and science at the mouth of the Navarro River.
Cynthia Myers Art Glass: Gallery site for a glass artist.

Site Maintenenance

Another broad category of web work I do is maintenance of existing sites. One advantage of being a generalist rather than a narrowly-defined specialist is that I can reasonably take on sites built in many different ways, whether they are hand-coded static HTML, custom database sites using PHP and MySQL, Wordpress sites, or sites built with any of a number of other tools.

The following sites do not represent my work as a visual designer or site architect. I simply maintain them.

Maintenance Projects

Rock the Ground: Another Wordpress site, this one has a whole flock of bells and whistles. It's for a local theatre troupe.
Bill Martin Gallery: A legacy art gallery for the late great Bill Martin.
Gallery Shelley Martin: A gallery site for local artist Shelley Martin. It's a simple custom database site using PHP and MySQL.
Bill Martin's Guide to Drawing: This art tutorial site is part of the lasting legacy of Bill Martin. It was built using a content management system (CMS) called ProcessWire.
Guide to Oil Painting: Another art tutorial site featuring the wisdom of Bill Martin, this one came to me as a large static HTML site. I think it was originally built with ProcessWire, but a previous webmaster extracted the code and re-built the site this way. I've begun to use PHP include files to make it easier to update and maintain.