First and foremost, welcome to the new blog. Thank you for taking the time to read what I hope will build into a reasonably comprehensive archive of my thoughts about the future of the internet, and more specifically web site development.

I am Chris Neale. I was a web developer for a little over a decade before deciding to stop hacking code for a living and take on some other, more entertaining projects. In the main they’ve been quite successful so far. I’ve had a lot of fun over the past six months and I’ve no intention of heading back to an office any time soon unless the exactly right opportunity arises.

During my 10 and a bit years of developing reasonably advanced internet technologies I came to a number of conclusions about the problems that face clients and developers in the modern internet age. From starting out hand-coding HTML for a large university, through building all the usual guestbooks and contact forms for small business clients, and on to designing and developing online applications for well-funded start-ups dealing with millions of pounds of sales through e-commerce and call centres, I’ve seen the same issues over and over again. Without exception they come down to one of three things;

  • A lack of understanding of the online world on the part of the client.
  • A lack of understanding of business processes on the part of the web developer.
  • A lack of communication between client and developer or client and customer.

They’re all entirely solvable issues. In fact, they’re trivial. With the right application of expertise on both sides, and proper communication between all parties there are no reasons why websites need roll out with the problems that they so often have.

Over the next month I am going to outline what I see as some of the more problematic issues that websites have, what can be done to solve them if they’re already in a website, and what can be done by everyone involved in website development to avoid them happening in the future. I hope you come back to read them.