ThinkWebSystems.com http://thinkwebsystems.com/wp3 Because I think a lot about the web. Thu, 21 Apr 2011 23:39:20 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.2 I’m Back! http://thinkwebsystems.com/wp3/blog/blog/im-back/ http://thinkwebsystems.com/wp3/blog/blog/im-back/#comments Thu, 21 Apr 2011 23:39:20 +0000 Ian M http://thinkwebsystems.com/wp3/?p=486 Continue reading →]]> I’ve just returned from working on my last contact as manager of a local garage. It all started with them hiring me to design a website for them. Being a busy small business they were having trouble keeping track of work, customers etc. and I said that I’d be able to help. This was quite a breath of fresh air for me, working in a completely different industry, dealing with customers and getting a feel for how the current business processes worked (or not) which of course enabled me to come up with some ideas and suggestions for improvement. One of the main ideas to come out of this was a garage management software package that I selected after trialling several. The new system was installed, configured and used by me for some considerable time before I trained the owners of the garage to operate it for themselves. I was there for six months designing new ways of logically doing things in the garage – how to book jobs in, appointments, actual workflow, scheduling and all the paperwork – a minimum amount in order to maintain order!

In summary I believe I achieved all I set out to do for Holmewood MOT Centre in the six months I spent there -  I know the clients are very happy with their new system and ways of working. Business continues to improve as does their ability to turn work around due to the more streamlined organisation.

]]> http://thinkwebsystems.com/wp3/blog/blog/im-back/feed/ 0 New Site Launched http://thinkwebsystems.com/wp3/blog/blog/news/new-site-launched/ http://thinkwebsystems.com/wp3/blog/blog/news/new-site-launched/#comments Thu, 22 Jul 2010 16:19:32 +0000 Ian M http://thinkwebsystems.com/wp3/twsv1/?p=316 Continue reading →]]> The news is, I have officially started work as a freelance web developer/designer and this is marked by the launch of my first professionally produced website and domain called thinkwebsystems.com. I have really enjoyed putting this site together and I think it would be useful to put together a tutorial for others at some point. This is the second site I have produced from scratch, first of all sketching out what I wanted to do then creating a Photoshop mock up. From the .psd file I sliced it up and made a static html version of the site and finally ported that to WordPress 3.0 where I used my first custom post types and custom fields.

I Heart WordPress

I have to say that I am a great fan of WordPress. You can now very quickly get a great CMS system up and running that is easy to use and you are in no way constrained as to what you can do really; it’s possible to create a one page site right up to a fully functional e-commerce system all using WordPress. I like this approach as it appeals to my software engineering side. We were taught that as software engineers we should analyse a given problem and decide objectively how best to provide a solution that would satisfy the requirements.

Knee Jerk Coder

I am not and never have been the type that will just go off and write lots of code without thinking about design and how all the parts of a system will fit and work together. Furthermore, I was trained to consider and use blocks of code or modules if they would work well rather than reinvent the wheel by coding everything myself, a true engineering approach to developing software systems. This is what I plan to bring to thinkWebSystems in an effort to maximise my productivity while giving my customers the best possible system given the time and money available.

Credit Where it’s Due

The online developer/designer community is fantastic; one of the reasons I love this industry is that you are always learning new stuff and there is no better way than the online community in my humblest of opinions. I have learned a lot from the great tutorials on several sites and some of them definitely deserve a mention because I have used some of the techniques they describe on this site. Thanks to all of the websites (listed in the sidebar) and people behind them that have helped me and they don’t even know it!

I hope you like my site, let me know what you think! And of course, if you want me to produce a website for you, please get in touch!

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