Ben C Kress - Developer/Designer/Photographer

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Why Custom?

As the world becomes more complex, so does the world of web development... Custom programming sometimes requires a lot of extra work and potentially time to get things tailored to your needs. However, this does not necessarily mean it takes more time than other options... But it is much more involved requiring ample knowledge and experience. Generally, with custom, one can focus on the problems at hand and solve them in a systematic fashion rather than chasing bugs and security issues conceived from pre-bought web templates and assets. And, although a lot of the coding may be done for you in many of the platforms available, many times it comes with the price of bugs and security issues which will take more time to resolve than if they weren’t there in the first place. Custom is hard work, and greatness takes time, but people don’t climb mountains because they're there, people climb mountains because other people don’t, other people won’t, because trying is a harder path. So, let’s try to make something great together… In the end, you will end up with a more simplistic and bombproof approach to your company’s web, branding, and social media presence. And, it will be a customized, collaborated effort. Still not convinced? Please read on if you would like to learn more…

Unfortunately, custom programming is becoming less of an occurrence in today's market. This is mainly due to favoring Content Management Systems such as WordPress and Drupal. While both of those serve their purposes decently, they are ultimately bloated, over-developed, and potentially insecure platforms to use for your website. Besides, do you really want your site to look like so many others due to colliding templates and widgets, run clunky on mobile, and have the potential/likelihood to be hacked? To combat this, most CMS platforms have been fragmented into component libraries and individual chunks which require constant updating to keep in-line with the platform's almost continuous security updates. What this means for you is that you must stay on top of managing and maintaining your site and its associated software to keep it running smoothly and securely. Custom coding does not suffer from this problem at the application level. At the server level... Well, that is another story. Servers do require maintenance to keep them running smoothly. However, once a site has been provisioned with the correct security protocols... Server maintenance becomes mostly about operating system updates.

Freedom you say? Custom frees you from the framework and the clunkiness of the widgitized and fragmented modern web. It also gives you the ability to run less, more efficient code that is specifically tailored to your application. Why load a bunch of excess code libraries to use one function that could be written specifically for your site? All that will do is hinder performance, increase the amount of data required per load, and generally provide a much less pleasing user experience. Custom also gives you much greater control over things like site security and SEO allowing you to achieve near perfect results that will allow your company to be indexed by search engines and appear within your search parameters while keeping your customers safe and happy with a pleasant browsing experience.

Custom development is also more environmentally friendly (or “green”) than platforms and external library usages. Why should a single website tie up multiple servers using CDN calls and libraries that will likely not be used in full inside of your project. The world wide web uses an amazing amount of power on a day to day basis due to over usage of shared resources and poor performing web sites. As time moves forward, the power demands will only become greater as will the need for server farms and more storage. By developing custom code that runs on minimal servers, your company can help reduce the carbon footprint of the web as well as provide a more reliable experience to your customers. Even though the CDN servers are very robust and can handle ample traffic, one of them is bound to cause your site problems sooner or later. Besides, the more external content you use, the more at risk you are to attacks and exploits. Obviously, this is not good for business and can likely be avoided with custom coding. To maintain an effort towards a greener earth, we all must start where we can... Let me help.

Summary

While custom is not for everyone... It can be tailored to fit just about anyone's needs. And, although I downplay the platforms, I am also capable and willing to create widgets that can be used within platform environments to satisfy the project's needs. Some things can be accomplished quicker via custom coding, some are quicker to use platform tools. However, the best performing, looking, etc... Will always be custom. So, if you or your company needs a web project that runs fast, is stable on all devices, secure, requiring zero "software updates", and its maintenance driven only by content updates... Feel free to reach out on my network page, but please check out the rest of the site while you are here. Thanks for visiting!

Specialties

UI/UX Design/Development, Desktop/Mobile Web Development, Flash Interface Development, Graphic Design, Photography, Server Management/Deployment/Security, Progressive Web Apps/Service Workers/Cryptographic Content Security, Page Load Speed/Analytics, Video Deployment/Editing/Web Codecs

Recent Works