home > about us

about us

Creating a web site - a step by step guide is a web site I created to provide a resource for people wanting to know about all aspects of web design. It is a step-by-step guide to creating a web site, from registering a domain name, HTML, style sheets, usability, design principles, creating graphics, using Dreamweaver and submitting to search engines. This guide provides all the steps needed to undertake to set up a web site. It's aimed at the non-technical person, who wants to learn how to do all the basics, and perhaps more.

This site contains (almost) everything I know about creating a good web site. I truly believe good usability and search engine optimization are paramount - a successful web site takes these factors into account at every stage of the design process.

I started off my design career in 1998 at SCO Ltd where I was initially employed to create graphics for web and print. This quickly extended to include web design, implementing corporate web pages, creating internal web sites and train content providers how to use the corporate web site templates. While working at SCO, I also looked after the Tarantella (http://www.tarantella.com) web site (this has since been redesigned).

SCO Ltd is no longer a company, it was bought by Caldera International, Inc in May 2001. Tarantella became independent from SCO and now trades as Tarantella, Inc.

In April 2000, I moved to a small web design agency, http://www.worldwidecity.com. Here, I specialized in web design and gained valuable experience in working to tight deadlines and budgets.

In October 2000, I began working for Synomics Ltd as the New Media Designer. Here, I was in charge of the external web site, intranet, all graphic design and GUI icons. During my time at Synomics, I redesigned and reorganized the corporate web site and the Intranet, implemented the HTML for JSP versions of products and carried out numerous graphic projects, including creating cinema adverts.

I now work for Accelrys Inc, in a similar capacity as the role with Synomics. I have recently redesigned the Accelrys web site (http://www.accelrys.com) to be more user friendly and accessible to search engines. As with Synomics, graphic design and GUI icons feature heavily in my day-to-day tasks. The new role also includes brochure and data sheet design.

You can see details of all the sites I have designed in the portfolio section. It's an online portfolio of web and graphic design carried out by myself, Karen Jessett. Some of the examples on this web site are of web or graphic design done while working at various companies, the remainder have been created for other contacts.