SimGuy.net - Projects: Web Development

I've done a great deal of web site design and development over the years. Much of what I've done has been for other people, but a few projects have been purely for personal benefit. Here's a listing of some of the more significant web development projects I am or once was responsible for.

To check out some of my other projects, you can return to the main Projects page.

SimGames.net

Latest Version: 4.0
Status: Complete
Standards Met: XHTML 1.0 Transitional, CSS
Samples: Not available currently

SimGames.net is a gaming site hosting network operated by Nozone, Inc. I am responsible for management of the network, and a web site was required in order to provide members and those interesting in apply with information about the network, as well as relevant rules and regulations. This design features simplified navigation and some new informational sections along the right side of the page. The redesign coincided directly with a relaunch of SimGames.net after some unexpected downtime. The site meets all W3C standards for XHTML 1.0 and Cascading Style Sheets and is friendly to Internet Explorer, Opera, Mozilla, and KHTML-based web browsers.

SimPage.net

Latest Version: 6.0
Status: Complete, Closed
Standards Met: XHTML 1.0 Transitional, CSS
Samples: Archived Web Site

SimPage.net was my personal fan site for the popular SimCity Series. The site design is fully XHTML 1.0 and CSS compliant, and the latest layout is an experiment into how effective a layout based entirely on CSS can be. The navigation menu is contained in a div and located at the linear end of the document. It is the only object on the page which is absolutely positioned, however none of the layout elements use tables unless they are displaying tabular information. It's the largest, most complex site I have used a pure CSS layout with thus far. I intend to post a few previous design concepts soon to show both the progess I have made, and some alternative concepts I have devised in the past.

This layout also represents my first use of CSS object heirarchy. In most of my other work I would define a class for each special type of object that I required. With the CSS heirarchy, I found that code could be massively streamlined, because I could instead define a style for all anchor tags contained within the menu without having to specifying the class for every single link.

SimPage.net closed in September 2003, as I decided to devote my time to other, more important matters.

WCKN.com

Status: Complete
Standards Met: HTML 4.0 Transitional, CSS
Samples: Active Web Site

WCKN's web site was in need of a new design. Due to lack of interest by any other members, I took on the task of giving the site a makeover and have served as its webmaster during my time as the WCKN network administrator. The site is designed to serve WCKN's viewers with information on the station's programming and services. The site is friendly to three major browsers: Internet Explorer, Mozilla, and Opera 7 (with a CSS workaround in place for Opera 6) and meets all W3C standards for HTML 4 and Cascading Style Sheets. This site's concept is based loosely on a prior design of SimGames.net.

SimGuy's Home

Latest Version: 1.x
Status: Archived
Standards Met: HTML 4.0 Transitional, CSS
Samples: Archived Demo Pages

Version 1.x of SimGuy's Home was a cool project, in my humble opinion. While the layout was never something I was totally happy with, this was the first site which I designed with the layout abstracted from the HTML code. I actually demonstrated the use of alternative stylesheets, but rather than do this in the manner specified by the W3C, I used conditional SSI statements to read the query string. Still, it was fairly neat. Take a look at the link to the project for more information about it.