Hello blog readers and curious onlookers. Hello spammers, too. There seem to be plenty of you spammers around, according to my comments sections. A few months back I had written how a book by Elizabeth Gilbert ignited a small fire within me to create more. You know, for creation’s sake.

During that time, I had started researching a book and even making calls with the goal of putting together a series of non-fiction stories about NHL players who had realized their dream of playing in the NHL – but ended up only playing one NHL game in their career. I had a few doozies that I was excited to write about. A few months after my research began, this book came out. Someone got to it before me. So it goes. Onward.

I’m happy that I have some creative freedom at my current job. We have a creative group that does the majority of our stuff and they do it so well. But I still get plenty of tasty morsels in terms of creative freedom. And that’s great. But I always want more. Insatiable need? Maybe. Today’s post isn’t about labels or personality traits, though.

Late last summer I connected with John, the owner of Hit the Net Sports, a sporting goods store in Acton, MA. They mostly sell hockey equipment, along with lacrosse and field hockey. Sounds familiar, right? I told him I was looking for a side project and would love to build him a new website. We met, I outlined my vision and he was cool enough to trust me to proceed with my vision. Neat.

Over the next 8 weeks, I slowly built the site, using the WordPress platform and a whole bunch of pictures I took at the store. The old site was very text heavy with a lot of images pulled off the internet. There were no actual pictures of the store. So my main goal was to turn it into something where the visuals tell the story. It’s not absent of text, but in an fast-increasing world of visuals, this was a glaring need. I also went in and shot some video, because video is where it’s at, if you’re to believe the marketing experts. Which I do.

In addition, I wanted to make sure the most common questions and their answers would be on every page, along with location and contact info. Important for a local business

Here’s a quick before and after shot of the hockey page:

BEFORE

building a website

AFTER

hit the net sportsIt’s my first real website project that I’ve built on my own, in its entirety, other than this blog. While it’s not 100% complete, it’s 95% of the way there and it’s certainly far enough down the road to launch. So launch it we did, just after Thanksgiving. If you want to see it all, you can see it here. Hope you dig it. I was happy to hear that John liked it and I’ll be doing more with him at some point soon.

My mission continues: create. Inside AND outside of work. It keeps my spirit burning.

If you need a small website built, let me know! I’d love to help you out. I have a full time job, so most of my work happens piecemeal, but I’d love to build more. You can hit me up here with questions or ideas.