Contrary to what many of my friends may think, I’m not actually a freelance CSS-JavaScript-XHTML mercenary-for-hire 
In fact, I do have a day job which usually keeps me very busy with all things code. But like most developers I also need an outlet to try out new things, without the restrictions imposed by paying clients and their general preconceptions about what the web should be.
Here are a handful of sites I’ve worked on in my own time, bringing to them whatever I could.
Dan Smith
As well as being my name, Dan Smith is a portal for the other sites that I maintain.
As well as linking to other sites that I’ve built and maintain, Dan Smith also pulls in data from Diigo and Last FM, transforming the data from the latter into something vaguely human-readable.
The site currently needs some maintenance as several of the linked sites have been moved to WordPress so the feed-to-page functionality isn’t working so well at the moment.
Dan Smith – Life
Life is where I blog about my general nuts-and-bolts ‘life’ type stuff.
This site applies a basic skin to a Blogger feed-to-webpage system that I hacked together a few years ago. JavaScript and PHP are used to Ajax in the banner images.
As the site was running off the ill-fated Blogger FTP service, moving the site over to WordPress is somewhere on my never-ending ‘to do’ list.
HTML Blues
HTML Blues was the previous incarnation of Do The Right Thing.
Like several of the other sites it was based on my Blogger feed-to-webpage system.
The design was a bit tongue-in-check, using CSS to build an interface that looked like a CSS editor.
I guess the negative connotations of ‘blue’ got to me, so I reinvented the site, focusing on positive actions (eg ‘Do..’). I can’t promise that everything that I post on Do The Right Thing is going to be cheery though!
www.dansmith.co.nz/web/
Neotropic
Neotropic is Riz Maslen, a UK-based singer, musician and visual artist, who is as at home with modern electronica as she is with classic indie pop arrangements.
Riz came to me via a recommendation from a friend. She’d been having problems with her hosting and needed someone who understood the web to make things better again.
After fixing the hosting issue I spent some time retrofitting the site layout with XHTML, CSS and JavaScript and later used PHP to integrate a 3rd party shopping cart and WordPress.
The site is now working well, but is now looking quite tired. If you have design flair and a vision for the site (and are affordable for musicians on a budget), get in touch, as Riz is looking for a designer to spice things up.
As of March 2011, Neotropic is now hosted on WordPress.com – same URL, different HTML
Panoramica
Panoramica is my musical alter-ego. My style is ‘Lush downbeat’. Think lounge music, with some more experimental tones as I blend in sounds sampled from the environment.
Obviously, being a front-end developer by trade, I wasn’t about to entrust the construction of my own site to anyone other than myself
The site uses PHP, XHTML, CSS and JavaScript, with page content coming from WordPress, SoundCloud, Flickr and Twitter. The PHP-side of things has been quite a steep learning curve for me, and I’ve also learned a lot by implementing dynamic stylesheets.
In the not-too-distant future I’d like to address some accessibility concerns I have with the site, including the coloured backgrounds and the Flash-only music players.
While_you_were_Sleeping
While_you_were_Sleeping is a website devoted to the activities of a creative AudioVisual collective that I’m part of.
Originally, the site was built from the ground up, and required design (!), HTML, CSS and integration with Blogger and Flickr via PHP.
More recently it has been updated to use WordPress for publishing.
