My web designing career – from 0 to…

Five years ago, after my tenth standard exams, I had a wish which was a dream at that time. – To start a personal website. One of my role models of that time was a young genius who is an expert in computers. He played with them. He ruled them… I was actually jealous on him. When I first started using computer during my fourth standard in my school, my wish was to become a computer engineer. I always tried to collect information about computers from the computer experts. Even when many of my friends were interested in computer games, I was fond of software and operating systems.

When I was studying in my eighth standard, a computer came into my family. Even then I was unaware about the different versions of Windows. (I even tried to copy solitare game from my windows 98 pc to the computer in my school, which had windows 3.1. I tried my best to get it worked…but failed!!). I became familiar to internet during that stage.

Till March 2001, websites were something which stood away from me. But when I saw that my ‘role model’ is having a webpage in his name, I was very interested. I was ready to join a course in Aptech. Then I asked him, whether to study HTML during that vacation. He told me not to do that. It is just a wastage of time and money! He taught me a trick to study html by showing the source code in Internet Explorer. (As per his advise, I joined for a C & C++ course during that vacation, which formed the base for programming in my career).I studied about the different sections of web hosting and domain names. He gave me some sites which offer free hosting and sub domain hosting.

I designed my first website in software named Microsoft Publisher 2000. Actually it is not a web designing software. It is a basic designing software meant for publishing brochures and manuals etc. The wizard will ask ur name and address and by pressing a button it will save the documents as WebPages. So simple! But it was something great for me. I registered a server in geocities.com which offers free web hosting along with ads.

I published the files and the first visitors for my website are a list of 7 people whose email I got from my inbox. Some of them were my father’s colleagues. They appreciated my work.

During the first year of my website’s jouney, there were only 150 visitors. I tried various marketing tactics for getting visitors for my site by sending emails to many people etc, but all of them were unprofessional methods.

Then I revamped my webpage with new features like winamp skins downloading etc. I used to develop programs in VB etc. and I started a downloading section for the software and its source codes. Thus the number of visitors became 1500 after two years.

During that time, me and my friend Kannan joined our hands together to work together under one name. (He is like me. One of my best friends during school days.) We planned to design websites for local firms as well as non-profit organizations. Since we need a base, we decided to design some websites for my school etc which can be shown as samples during marketing. But during that time, we faced two problems: Lack of facility for the registration of domain names and lack of search engine marketing tactics. Our first customer was a local medical shop in my hometown. We were introduced to them by our computer sir. The shop owners were interested in making websites and as per their needs we designed for them and they paid for it. Rs.300. we both shared it. So Rs. 150 was my first share in my web designing career. Since we were busy with our twelfth standard studies, we were unable to do any more projects during that time.

After twelth exams, I got enough time to study many scripting languages (I used to spend about 3 hours daily in the internet, and my telephone bills were around 10,000 per month!!!). I studied ASP, CGI/PL etc along with JavaScript etc..Then I got many projects from Middle East. My father helped me for that. I designed websites for Al-Mutlaq Group of Concerns, Al-Manarah Jubail Contracting Corporation etc which are some of the leading companies in Middle East.

Last May, my website completed its fourth year; I registered a domain name and hosting for that. And this may it completed successful five years and more than 18,000 visitors. Designed numerous websites for different organizations – from a small medical shop to large scale contracting corporations in Middle East. The websites designed by me is listed in leading search engines like Google and MSN. This is my past. As a tribute to the graceful God, who helped me to grow like this, I am not taking any designing charges for non-profit organizations. They only have to pay the server’s and domain name’s cost.

Through my websites I made so many friends from all over the world. People from different parts of the world of various age groups contact me to help them to study and to clear doubts about this field. I am happy and proud about that!