Hello & Welcome

Tue, 07 Apr 2009 11:30 -0600

I am excited to announce the launch of Bitfyre.net, my new online presence and business. It is a place to post examples of my work and to share my thoughts and experiences in web design, web development, and entrepreneurship.

For those of you whom I have not met, I am Alex Lemanski, a web craftsman living and working in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Welcome to my site, and thanks for visiting.

I would like to thank the following people for their eyes, ears, and advice throughout the process of making Bitfyre a reality. First, to my wife, Kristi, for her patience and keen eye, and for helping me find the right name to begin with. Second, a big thank-you to Chris Galvin who provided countless hours of guidance on the design. And, finally, thanks to Tim Mills, Mike Bingaman, Erik Vorhes, and Heena Ko who each advised me in various ways throughout the process of launching Bitfyre.net.

Since I know at least a few people are interested in the inner workings of the site, here they are. I built the interface using XHTML and CSS, and in the future I will make some unobtrusive JavaScript enhancements. The Content Management System (CMS) is Symphony CMS, a wonderful PHP- and MySQL-based system that allows for a great deal of flexibility when you think creatively. Finally, the hosting environment is a standard LAMP stack.

In the future, as time allows, I will be making the following tweaks to make the site a little slicker:

Improved footer
JavaScript enhancements in places like the Portfolio
General design enhancements

Thank you to everyone who has given me encouragement during this process. I appreciate your support immensely. I look forward to sharing more of my work, thoughts, and ideas with everyone as time goes on. Please subscribe to the RSS feed or check back soon for updates.