Darron Beetge

Port Alfred

Darron — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 12:33:11 +0000

There is something quite special coming back to the place you grew up in, well in my case, the place I spent all my teen and early adult years in. But coming back there with a family of your own is really special. It’s funny how small towns can invoke strange emotions in the returnee.

I left Port Alfred in 2006, never expecting to come back. The world was my oyster and I had big plans for travelling. That was until I met my wife on the other side of the world and started to settle down. But there is always that longing to be back home in South Africa. So when my wife was expecting our first child we decided that it was best to return to my home country.

We have now settled back in Port Alfred with the new addition to our family, Ronin Beetge. In most ways Port Alfred is exactly as when I left, just with the addition of a brand new shopping complex, but most of my friends have left for greener pastures.

I still see all the promise of a bright future in Port Alfred and as I slowly build up my old contacts network I can see that future getting brighter every day.

Dry Carpet Cleaners

Darron — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 12:09:41 +0000

Dry Carpet Cleaners was my first paid website work since arriving back in South Africa. The design was already completed by Wynell Colville-Reeves and all I had to do was code it into XHTML/CSS.

While the site is extremely simple, I still wanted to do my best to create valid markup and make it as Search Engine friendly as possible. I didn’t just cut up the design, I planned the layout and text to create a site that is both visiualy appealing and quick to load.

Technologies Used:

XHTML/CSS
Search Engine Submission

» Visit Dry Carpet Cleaners Now «

Back Online

Darron — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 17:34:31 +0000

Now that I’ve settled back in my home country, South Africa, it’s time to get down to some serious work. Having spent the last few years living and working in Asia, I have gathered some great experiences and a wealth of ideas that I will be using in my future projects. Nothing opens your eyes as much as a different culture.

With the recent addition to my family I have decided to start fresh and cleaned out all the clutter on my old site. The new site not only looks better, it makes it easy to navigate my core skills and all the projects I have worked on. That being said, there is still a lot to do. So I will keep this post short.

Over the next few weeks, I will agressively market myself and really take on the competition. It’s time for South Africa to really shine on the web front and I will be right there to help your company to digital superiority.

Hobby Kit

Darron — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 12:07:24 +0000

Hobby Kit was my first Ecommerce project. After evaluating various PHP based shopping cart systems, I finally settled on OpenCart as my system of choice.

The theme had to be clean and very easy to navigate to entice customers to buy the products. Being based in South Africa, where PayPal is not yet commonplace, I had to create my own Payment modules for handling payments through a local Payment Processor.

Technologies Used:

OpenCart Ecommerce System
PHP/MySQL
AJAX/JavaScript
XHTML/CSS

» Visit Hobby Kit Now «

Heli Reviews

Darron — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 17:36:17 +0000

Heli Reviews started as a personal project. Now because it was a personal project I had complete control over every aspect of the design. I decided to use WordPress as the base system as I was already familiar with it and it suited my needs perfectly.

The theme needed to be clean and easy to navigate. I wanted to make it very Web 2.0, so I used JQuery for various display functions. I also integrated various social networking options to extend the reach and interactivity of the site.

Technologies Used:

WordPress Blogging System
PHP/MySQL
AJAX/JavaScript
XHTML/CSS

» Visit Heli Reviews Now «