Truth is, I’m not the right web consultant or webmaster for everyone. But while chatting with a CPA about my business strategy, I reminded myself of some of the advantages I offer that others don’t. For example:

• Hire me if you want a writer and editor, not just a technician. Because of my background as a Technology Editor for Internet World and current role as a tech columnist for Forbes.com, as well as years of web copywriting and work with clients other marketing materials, I can help you define your message and create compelling copy.
• Hire me if you want to pursue sustainable search engine optimization. The right way to do it is by creating compelling content that people will want to link to and search engines will want to index. We can bake targeted keywords into the headlines and body copy for the search engines, while still delivering something humans will want to read. But it takes work and patience. Beware of hustlers promising easy riches.
• Hire me if you want help with web strategy. If you know exactly what you want and how to achieve it, you can hire cheap coders from overseas to accomplish it, and I can’t afford to compete with their rates. But if you want help translating your business goals into a web strategy, hire me.
• Hire me if you want the option of being independent or self-sufficient. Virtually all my work these days is based on the WordPress web publishing system, which allows me to give my clients a password they can use to post their own blog entries and page edits. Even if you want me to make the updates most of the time, you should have the option of doing yourself if you need something posted (or deleted) quickly and I am unavailable. I strongly recommend against hiring a webmaster who won’t give you that level of access to your own website.
• Hire me if you want someone who is flexible, adaptable, and multi-talented. If you have a bigger budget, maybe you can afford to hire a whole team of people, each with a specialty in writing, editing, graphics, programming, database, JavaScript, and so on. I can do a little bit of everything, or pull in subcontractors as necessary.
• Hire me if you want help with email marketing and social media, not just the website. I’ve worked with several systems for distributing email and learned all the hard lessons about spam filters and the varying HTML support of different email clients. I actively work my Facebook and Twitter accounts, and I’m up to 1,400+ professional contacts on LinkedIn.
• Hire me if what I have to offer matches what your business or organization needs. Contact me at 954-757-5827 or david@carrcommunications.com

Hello, my name is David Carr. I am a writer, editor, and web consultant.

I write a column on technologies for small to midsize businesses for Forbes.com and also freelance for publications such as CIO Magazine. I’m a former Technology Editor of Internet World Magazine and Baseline Magazine, where I had the opportunity to profile major internet operations like Google, Yahoo!, and MySpace, as well as report in depth case studies on corporate IT.

I also do ghost writing and produce white papers and other marketing materials for corporate clients.

As a consultant, I help small businesses and nonprofits use the web, email, and social networks more effectively to promote themselves and make money. My practical web skills include PHP programming, WordPress customization, and integration web services such as PayPal. I also boost my clients search engine rankings using tools like WordTracker and Google Analytics.

I bring a mix of editorial, analytical, and technical skills to any project I undertake, whether that means writing search optimized headlines for articles I write for publication, polishing the front page copy for a website, or monitoring the feedback to a web or email campaign.

I’m looking to bring those skills to organizations that would value that mix, either on a fulltime or contract basis.

My editors, colleagues, and clients will all tell you what a reliable and resourceful guy I am, and I look forward to proving it to you.

Latest incarnation of my explanation of who I am and what I do, prepared for a career seminar.

Just an experiment. This should display an events listing, with each entry going to a details page formatted with custom post types in WordPress 3.0.

I’ve written several versions of an events management plugin. This next one will have 2 main advantages:

• By taking advantage of the built-in WordPress custom post types and URL-mapping, the events listings will take advantage of more native functionality, including the search engine optimization virtues of WordPress.
• I’ve been working to do a better job of handling events that span multiple days.

This is still a work in progress, need to make it prettier and more functional still.

This is my Test

Here is a first real test

This is a test event for Christmas 2010

Open your presents now!

Whoo, hoo!

A few months after doing a technical refresh on rebelcook.com to move it to the WordPress publishing system, I’m back working on a redesign with Rebel’s agency, Gibson Roscoe Advertising. I had worked with her on a few alternate layouts over several years, but this is better than anything I’d come up with on my own. My role was to adapt the mockup they gave me into a WordPress template using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

Rebel Cook Home Page

The new design is built around the bright red “For Sale” sign Rebel Cook has posted on commercial properties around South Florida. A friend commented “you really have to like the color red,” and perhaps we’ll eventually tune it down. But I’m really happy with the image carousel at the top of the page that displays featured properties, which is based on the jQuery jCarousel.