About the Proper Programming Website.

Great news! The website, ProperProgramming.com has reached release! It’s been far too long. After all we’ve been doing this for how long? Over four years, and yes, it will never be “done”. I still see problems with it, but I can be picky. Perfection isn’t the goal, sharing great information with my customers is.

I wanted this site as an example and something that was all mine. No per-made theme (templates) would do what I wanted. I’d design everything from the most basic beginnings, with the final goal bright, brilliant and unique. Something to show my future clients what I’m capable of. Something that wasn’t what I see everywhere else. I think I’ve found success.

The Start

I started with the bare necessities. WordPress and a publicly available bootstrap starter template. My goal was to showcase my skills and provide an example of what’s possible. The plan was to create something different that was also fast, easy on the eyes, warm and welcoming. 

First, I needed a hosting company. There were a few choices, but I ultimately turned to SiteGround to provide a reasonably costing service, while giving me a managed platform that could cut my maintenance cost.

The disadvantage of bootstrap comes in the form of CSS and JavaScript loading on pages it may not be used on. “Unused CSS” is the common industrial term. It slows our first impression, but may improve sequential page views. It was clear, in this case, that the benefits of using frameworks greatly outweigh the negatives. We could also solve this problem through optimizations.

Making these choices is not easy. Many professionals are unaware of these concepts. After all, many massive corporations don’t provide this level of quality. Thus, I decided to focus on optimizations on the top landing pages, while balancing a few more universal resources given our growing potential. After all, I knew I could manually make optimizations as needed.

Colors

Why did you choose these colors?

I decided an eccentric color scheme to stand out from our competitors and give our visitors something a bit different from the normal.

At first, we offered a darker background, which would be easier on the eyes for people spending long hours in front of a computer. The more I worked with it, the more I loved it. I knew it was a match. The site is here to stand out.

After A/B testing, we optimized the colors to what ends in the most leads. Wild, colors turned out to be a success. But due to several requests and some research, we soon moved to a light mode with an option to switch to the dark mode.

Color Palette

Purples

Oranges

Green

The color scheme was something I discovered accidentally through a series of odd events and a mistake. I immediately fell in love with them. It’s spicy, yet also warm and inviting. It has certainly captured my imagination.

Light/Dark Mode

Dark mode came first. But many complained about the dark mode. So, we added a light mode feature, to give everyone a bit of what they want.

Fonts

Next, focus had to be paid to the fonts. Each one needed to portray the feelings we wanted, their spacing, sizing and other features had to be adjusted to meet their needs.

Lato – A commanding font that is great for giving a sense of authority.

Civita – A font that is easy to read, yet stylish and traditional.

Site Content

The next challenge was to create the text I’d use to sell my services. I’d researched various competitors for inspiration, and slowly worked towards something original, and also hit the SEO keywords I wanted. I had researched how to write a call to action, and started incorporating what I learned into a document.

It took many generations to get the text perfect. The need for the right emotions is essential.

Fine tuning

Bugs, bugs everywhere! Combinations easily create the issue we face. Mobile, tablet and desktops got to look great. Safari, Firefox, Chrome, and Edge need to look great. Every device had to show the best we have. Granted, even our competition had not been so exhaustive as I had to be. 

Most sites don’t need perfection. This was to be an example. Our requirements for an MVP were higher than most. No excuses were in order. The cost of perfection can be extensive, and it always ends in failure, but we had to get close!

My tests often revealed the combinations of different browsers, and different sizes. Fixes typically broke other devices, pages or other browsers. Trial and error got the right combination, and experience ensured this impact was minimum. 

Eventually, I got to where you see things now. I’m proud and love what I came up with, and hope you enjoy the website! Please tell me if new browsers develop problems.

Evolution

In 2020, I developed a tool to help remove JQuery from much of his code. I created the JQuery Converter, and with his blessing, I released this tool to the public. It soon became the largest traffic driver to my website, and thus the next evolution of the website began. I soon realized that resources for developer to do their job are missing.

In 2022, I released the Python to PHP converter, and found it also drew software developers to my website. I also started creating a company directory to feature my clients, and those that utilized my resources.

I also started reselling Web Hosting to my clients, as I could offer them great deals on many hosting plans by bundling them with others. I decided to start sharing this with the public, as a way to increase the benefits of this and help the community I created find more resources they will need.

Revisions

November 24th, 2022—Cleaned up the language a bit more. Fixed Grammar, and updated it to the most recent version. Added “Evolution” Section and more.

Nov 14th, 2021—Several revisions were made. Fixes, light mode, and more were added. Removed plugins for speed. Performance tuning. Introduced A/B testing.

April 8th, 2020—Added some more animations and refined the performance and other aspects. Significant improvements in the polished were made with bug fixes. We got more work in Performance and Content left.

April 12th, 2020-Added Color Palette, Fonts with some more minor improvements and editing.

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