About Solution Smith
Solution Smith is a sole proprietorship created to provide technical consulting and online webmaster services, which openly publishes how-to information. Services and information are based on Solution Smith's talent stack. The design style is marketing and SEO First web design, with intuitive user interfaces. Content creation is focused on marketing and SEO. Coding is semantic and schema based. Custom hosting can be provided to allow microservices integration on the site.
System Admin
Smith has been a system administrator for mid-sized businesses. Works with a broad array of networks, client/server, peer-to-peer, and services Apache Linux, voice over IP, et la. Smith has been that guy who people come to in order to have their systems configured and setup, and for a number of years was that guy who kept all the systems in the network running, secured, and with no loss of data. Was the first person people would turn to if they had a virus on their personal computers.
Marketing
Smith's online content is a marketing-first mentality. Design needs a purpose, A Website needs a purpose; Marketing is a purpose.
Whether for profit or influence content needs a return on investment. Websites need to be found by qualified buyers. Content needs to be written to assist the customer in making an informed choice, and graphics needs to properly present the product. Additional social media platforms come into play for both brand and product marketing; these platforms may be content based such as Youtube, or directory based such as Google Maps.
The first profitable website created by the founder was an employment search engine. Using Javascript on the front end and Perl on the back end. The site helped users find a job across multiple employment sites. Perl was used to index or crawl a variety of sites and income was produced by affiliate marketing to large employment sites. Employment was chosen because it was competitive.
Back End Web Dev
Smith moved into the software industry in the mid 90s; First to debug and support customers using large database applications. And, became intimately familiar with the processes of maintaining data integrity under real-world situations including bad input and computer resource-generated issues in network environments, both with and without record locking requirements. At times database reconstruction was necessary and a small program was created to do the reconstruction. Merging of database between systems was done before the internet with dial-up modems, and of course, unique identifiers for records were in practice. Coding Smith is an advocate for systems that fix themselves without costly intervention to keep the system running.
Web Design
Marketing and persuasion have greatly shaped how Solution Smith sees design and composition. People's eyes automatically look at the part of a composition that is lighter in color, and the part of a photo that is in focus. Design tells the subconscious what to look at. Imagery creates emotion, design tells us what to feel. And, animation tells a story. A story tells us what is important to remember.
Dissonant objects attract attention and resolving the dissonance creates an emotional response of joy. For example, in Edward Bernays's early days, he promoted a circus by having a man circle the block placing bricks on the sidewalk, and then circle the block picking them up. This behavior was different or dissonant from the norm. People noticed and followed him to the circus, the dissonance was resolved and noted the circus at the same moment as they had resolved this dissonance to inform them of the circus, which they now were not going to forget.
Graphics and Photography
If not for the computer industry, Smith would have been drawn to photography and video production. The enjoyment here is in both the creativity and technical aspect of the creations. The electronics and computer industry won because it requires more thought to produce. Although there was no need in the early days of computing for photography or video — Photography and graphics have always been a passion. Because of digital photography and video, they have merged into the online space. Years in the software industry and in supporting users have resulted in a preference for a clean design for the user interface. Solutions Smith is an advocate of user interfaces where users can navigate without a learning curve.
From years in the business arena, both in the physical product and in the IP product arenas; Solutions Smith's graphics and photography are primarily influenced to present products in an appealing manner, with dissidence to appeal to younger audiences and attract the viewer's eye. Text elements themselves, are best used to focus the attention of the viewer, and the supreme skill is to do so without the viewer paying much attention or even noticing their artistic nature. Artistic text elements are also used to give the reader a breaking point between areas that are read. The founder also has experience in the arena where images are needed to elicit an emotional response for a call to action.
Electronics and Networks
Smith worked in electronics and RF but moved into building computers. With a short period of using computers to produce representative simulations of emerging electronic devices. The "internet of things" merges the fields of electronics and computers as Ardunios are an interface between electronic devices and computer logic. They also provide for network communications allowing them to communicate between devices and to the internet/intranet or smartphone.
Personal computers of course moved into networks of computers; Solutions Smith worked at building networks using numerous different protocols and configurations from peer to peer through client to host and the software that makes these systems function.
For digital marketing Solutions Smith leverages networking services to bring advanced services to websites.
Software and Project Management
While still working with computer hardware, Smith Built an database application for book keeping requires of a local computer shop. When became employed in software the applications were relational database applications and it was possibily the experiance in building the database application that made that possible.
In working between R&D and ownership, as well as between product and end-user: Or the responsibility of the tasks of project management and technical support. Smith has simplified complex concepts into user-level or management-level verbiage. And, can fulfill the need to teach people about blue ocean products or projects within the marketing sphere.
Front End, Back End coding, and the internet of things
The early days computers needed to be built. The majority of this was simple electronics but also involved simple coding at the BIOS level to communicate to devices such as printers and clock chips. Andrino devices, (the internet of things), have rekindled the spirit of creating electronic products or smart boxes.