Over the years I’ve always done my best to try to keep up with the next big thing. I embraced the internet and had a website early on. After designing a few sites I taught myself (with the help of a few friends) to create in simple HTML. When Flash came out I bought a book and did a tutorial then created my first Flash project. But for the most part I kept my self separated from the code…especially anything too complicated.

Over the past few years more and more clients want to have their site created but then manage it themselves. Thanks to Open Source Software this has become an affordable reality. There are a many options that use Open Source Software – including Joomla!, Drupal and of course WordPress – that allow for site development within their Content Management Systems. Even with these options I’ve stuck to the design and let the programmers deal with back end…until now.

I decided it was time to take the plunge and of course I could install WordPress for free and pick a theme from among the thousands available and call it my own but what would the fun be in that. I started by taking some online tutorials at Lynda.com and then began to create my new site – this site – from scratch. That’s right a blank piece of paper if you will. I created the initial design in Fireworks and then started creating the code. First basic HTML pages that used CSS to format the elements and then I took that code and wove it into a blank WordPress theme.

I won’t lie and say that it was easy and didn’t tax my brain a bit, but it started making sense and it turned into a lot of fun. I’m glad I took the initiative to try something new. And it shows that you can teach an old dog new tricks…just don’t ask me to roll over and play dead – I’m not ready to give up yet…and I’m not sure my “old” knees couldn’t take it.