My Portfolio
Personnel Profiles Employment Screening, Inc.
My current employment has led me into the background checks and employment screening industry. This web site is my pride and joy. You can click on the picture to go directly to the page, or you can simply click here: http://www.personnelprofiles.com. On this site you will find a variety of common and useful techniques for web page design and search engine optimization. The drop-down menu system was built using cascading style sheets and a very small JavaScript file. The advantage of this type of script as opposed to a pure JavaScript drop-down menu system is that they search engines can crawl this links and index all of the pages that they come across.
Merchants Information Solutions, Inc.
This is where I am currently employed and the site can be viewed here: http://www.merchantsinfo.com. Merchants purchased Personnel Profiles where I previously worked on the website. I was put in the webmaster position. I maintain this site along with the one above and the few beneath. I took over this site and have been working with .NET as the main technology.
This site was originally done in .NET 1.1. It has been converted to .NET 2.0 and has taken advantage of master pages and other great enhancements. This site has come a long way.
One of the major pushes on this site has begun recently to improve our search engine rankings. Using some various techniques, I was able to shift some hidden variables that were rather large to the bottom of the page, inside the code that is. This should help quite a bit. Since the site uses master pages, some steps to include dynamic title, description and keyword meta tags for every page was done. Piece of cake. Let's see if it moves up in the search engines now.
Update. Finally! I was able to finally update the old Merchants Information Solutions, Inc. site to this much improved, more professional looking site. The entire site is much more user friendly and easier to navigate and find information.
I left the previous site image above so you can do your own "before and after" comparison.
American Tescor, LLC
Shortly after purchasing Personnel Profiles, Merchants purchased American Tescor, LLC which is a behavioral psychological and integrity testing company. I have since improved the design and layout of their website to what it looks like now. You can visit the site by clicking here: http://www.americantescor.com
Recently, I have taken the opportunity to redo the logo. It is not seen here yet (1/12/2008), but should show up in the next week or two. It is a dramatic improvement over the current, original logo, which looks hideous.
Not pictured, but also noteworthy is the actual online application that American Tescor uses, known as HRMagent, or the Tescor Survey. I was instrumental in the design makeover for that site as well. Wow! That one needed some work. It looks great now.
ID AdovcatesSM
After purchasing American Tescor, LLC, Merchants went on to purchase ID Advocates. This company sells ID theft protection and recovery solutions for business. I have since taken over as the webmaster for this site. This site was in dire need of a makeover. There were serious misspellings all over the place, including the home page on the word "identity". Not good. You can view the site by clicking here: http://www.idadvocates.com
Aside from using .NET technology, this site is the first opportunity I have had to work with a database and login fields. I used the Microsoft .NET Membership Provider. It turned out very well and was surprisingly simple. I really enjoyed developing this site and hope to get a chance to do another one like it someday.
Though not really a consumer site, this site ranks well for certain keywords due to some fancy SEO work behind the scenes.
Legacy110™
Here's one just recently completed. The client wanted it kept simple, yet somewhat elegant in nature. Trying to use colors from their logo, this is what I was able to come up with. The client was happy in the end. I designed it in straight HTML specifically for this client. I would have rather developed this in .NET, but I do what the client wants and they were looking for the easiest way to maintain the copy themselves. I figured this would be the simplest way given their level of expertise.
Telonics, Inc.
My adventures in web programming began at Telonics, Inc. You can click on the picture to go directly to the page, or you can simply click here: http://www.telonics.com. Since I no longer work there, I am no longer in charge of the web site. It has undergone major transitions over the past couple of years. Still, a variety of pages still intact were developed by me.
Desert Toys
This site was done a while ago. You can click on the picture to go directly to the page, or you can simply click here: http://www.deserttoys.com. Nothing has changed since I did my last work on it, which was nearly 5 years ago. It's pretty simple, yet it incorporates some PayPal shopping cart and purchasing for some of the products available on this site. To my knowledge, the person that owns this site is still in business selling all of the items listed.
It may not be much to look at, but it is worth noting that each view of each gun part is a dynamically generated page. When you click on the image, a page is created that uses the larger image of the item. This technique uses JavaScript to create the pages. Simple, yet effective.
Bigdobermans.com
This is my latest rework. Either click the picture or click here: http://www.bigdobermans.com to go to the site directly. I was asked to take this page and help boost the search engine rankings. My study of the site found that it could use a better layout and some general improvements. This was the result.
Aside from adding some visual improvements, the code was greatly reduced to get rid of the Microsoft bloat that generally accompanies WYSIWYG editors. It wasn't hurting the overall look of the site, but the code was pretty nested with tables and generally difficult to make enhancements to. Now, the code is much cleaner and will be much easier to maintain. Plus, I got rid of the tables, except where they were truly called for.
I have to say, if you're looking for a Doberman, this is the place to get them from. This site has big Doberman Pinschers for sale. They will also ship anywhere. They definitely have some nice looking Dobermans and can provide any family a great pet, plus a home security solution. If you're interested in dogs, you should see what they have to offer.
Howtobreeddogs.com
This site was a rework from a previously hosted blog. The site needed to be redone in ASP.NET and is my first attempt at side work using the .NET platform. Using master pages, it was prety simple and turned out well.
If you are looking for a book to figure out how to make a living breeding dogs, try this site. This book is from the same person that sells Dobermans at www.bigdobermans.com. Well worth the price of the book.
Allamericanpetproducst.com
From the same people at www.bigdobermans.com and www.howtobreeddogs.com, comes another great site for pet owners. It only makes sense if you are going to breed dogs and sell them, you may as well develop and sell your own formulated pet food.
This site is new from the ground up. Using .Net technology and incorporating a shopping cart from www.1shoppingcart.com, selling products online just became easier.
Coda Enterprises, Inc.
Here's a small site (1 page), yet it's what the owner wanted. You can click on the picture to go directly to the page, or you can simply click here: http://www.codaenterprises.com. Sometimes you only need one page of information to display small amount of information. Usually, the more content you can provide to your customers the better. So, try and develop as much marketing copy as possible. These products are well known to many industries including law enforcement and animal wildlife researchers. This is just proof that small things can lead to bigger things.
Other Sites Not Shown
There are a couple of more sites that I have done in the past that have either changed hands completely, or have disappeared so I won't even bother to list them. They've moved on, and so shall I.
The other site that I did from scratch I turned over to the company a few years back. For some reason, the domain is still listed and hosted, yet there is no viewable files to see. I think that company has gone out of business so I won't even bother showing you the address. It was a vinyl products company. They did vinyl fencing, gazebos and other stuff.
In the future I hope to have many more sites to proudly display as my accomplishments. Who knows, maybe it will be yours?
John Crismon
