McKelveyMaghsoud
Special Features
WordPress blog, Portfolio, Photo Gallery
Site Design Summary
McKelveyMaghsoud has been my family’s personal website since 2004. The site has evolved into different things the past few years, and now it has been replaced with this, HeatherKate.com. In the beginning, McKelveyMaghsoud was a domain name chosen by me and my sister Holly to be used as a web store for the jewelry she made. We had grandiose plans back then to create a brand name of jewelry--Holly would manufacture and distribute the jewelry, and I would market it online. I had zero knowledge of HTML, FTP clients, and web domains, and I did not even know where to begin to acquire that knowledge. But I was ambitious, determined, and only had one child. And THAT was the beginning of my web design career.
I quickly realized I would need the right software to do the job, so I purchased Dreamweaver, and eventually honed my skills with Adobe Photoshop. McKelveyMaghsoud began with a few family pics with the intention of becoming a retail site. Soon after, Holly got really busy with her restaurants, I got a part-time job at the church, and I became pregnant with Hunter late that summer. The jewelry business never happened. In my job at the church I took on the task to create the church website, and then I decided to delve head-first into web programming so that I could hand-code websites to get exactly what I wanted. By the time I had Hunter, I had web clients knocking on my door, and I haven’t had much of a break since.
McKelveyMaghsoud ended up being my personal blogging site and family photo gallery. The site has had many designs, and once it grew beyond it’s original purpose, I decided it was time to rename it. I labored over this decision for quite a while, and even reserved more than one domain for myself. I could not figure out exactly what the site should be. I needed a personal blogging site, a professional portfolio site, and a Southern Living at HOME training site all rolled into one, and no name I came up with seemed to fit the bill. While on vacation at Ocean Isle, NC, I spent a fair amount of time brainstorming and photo-journaling in order to inspire a name, and by the end of the week, I had decided on Heather Kate. My first name mixed with a shortened version of my middle name, Heather Kate has a slightly anonymous yet playful personality, and I feel that it represents who I have become. I am a stay-at-home mom, part-time music teacher, freelance web designer/developer, and Southern Living at Home consultant. All of these things are part of my life, so all of them deserve to be part of my website. HeatherKate.com is meant to encompass all of me--my spirituality, my mommyhood, my ambition, and my budding success.
Technicalities
XHTML, CSS, PHP
Software Used
Adobe Photoshop 7.0, Macromedia Dreamweaver MX 2004, WordPress;
I have since upgraded to Adobe CS3 and a 24-inch iMac, which I lovingly named Fuji after my favorite kind of apple.