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Hi. I'm Dave, the internet addict behind FeedbackFair, Cheatography and Envoy.

About Dave and Added Bytes

Find out more about the site and its owner - a little history, a little future and a little picture.

The Short Version

The Long Version

This site runs on MODx, an excellent open-source PHP CMS. The site is HTML 5, using CSS for presentation, with JavaScript providing progressive enhancement. If you're using IE, it probably looks terrible. This site is a hobby - I can live with poor IE support.

The site has an elastic layout, meaning the site expands with your browser window within predefined limits - the idea is to make the most of available space, without allowing the site to expand so far text becomes unreadable. The site used to have a lovely printer style sheet, meaning you could print an article and it would be automatically formatted appropriately. I will reinstate that ... eventually.

Enough about the site, though. I am Dave, a web developer from the south of the UK employed as the Head of Digital for GSBA. I am responsible for the company's digital output, and that involves a variety of responsibilities including team management, infrastructure, hosting and hands-on coding.

I've been involved with web design and online marketing since 1993, when I set up my very first hobby site. It was the first of many - I churned out dozens of small sites, mostly hosted on Angelfire and similar free hosts. They were largely appalling and if you were unfortunate enough to experience one of them I can only apologise and assure you that I've learned a lot since then!

On I went for a few years, writing HTML and playing with simple JavaScript effects, enjoying myself immensely. In 1998, a friend of the family asked me to so some work on a website in return for money - a thought that had not, to that point, occurred to me. Once I realised it was possible to make a living building websites, I was hooked. I did more and more work for friends and family, and worked for a while as a freelance web designer before deciding to make a career of doing what I enjoyed. If you want to know more about my career from that point, have a look at my portfolio.

For several years, I served as a moderator and technical administrator at Cre8asite Forums, where I spent my time picking the brains of usability, accessibility, marketing, design and development experts. I learned a huge amount there and am grateful to the contributors there for their time and generosity.

When not working, I try and spend as much time as I can outside away from computers. I've been with Mrs Dave since April 2000, and we got married on 22nd April 2006. I enjoy snowboarding and skiing, but don't get to go nearly as often as I'd like. I also cycle regularly and play in a squash league, and have taken a recent shine to geocaching and disc golf.

In September 2008 I started a physics degree with the Open University, which I expect to finish in 2014.

Please do feel free to email me if you have any questions, suggestions or problems.

About Dave and Added Bytes was posted on 02 January 2009 and has not been tagged yet.