Back in 2002, my mom was starting a business, doing some speaking engagements and writing a book.  She asked me, an erstwhile IT support guy at the time, if I knew anyone who could build her a website.  ”Well, I can do it,” I asserted, as I had been planning on learning how to do html at some point, if I ever found a good reason.  The other factor was that I did not, at the time, know anyone who could make a decent-looking site.

That first version was hand-coded in old fashioned html and css.  It later moved to Joomla (needed an excuse to dabble) and now finally to Wordpress (where it belonged all along).  I build sites for my brother, my sister-in-law, my aunt (that one was entirely in flash), and once I had run out of relatives, I started taking clients.

But then my work life became such that I didn’t have time for these projects on the side any longer.  And my skills began to get rusty, and I didn’t like it as much as I used to.  I didn’t follow web design blogs, and I didn’t geek out about favicons or typography like I used to.

Luckily for me, several projects have recently come up, along with more focus at work on design, and I’ve been able to beef up my portfolio a bit.  Which is a lot of fun.  I’ve also discovered that I remembered a lot more than I forgot about designing standards-compliant, CSS driven, beautiful, interactive websites.  I’m also glad to actually enjoy that IE 6 has been officially decommissioned.

So here’s to Smashing Magazine, Lifehacker, french press coffee, and more projects on the horizon!  Here’s to inspiration in Bill Waterson, twitter feeds (thanks for the link, @dannyhouk), and downtown St. Louis architecture!  Here’s to a refresh of my RSS feeds, and a brand new version of brentonmumford.com!