Ben Henick

So... what do I do? I build sites, or at least participate in building them. I do markup, CSS, JavaScript/DOM, PHP/SQL, copywriting, documentation, even occasionally art direction, even more occasionally design - in other words, pretty much everything aside from server administration. After fifteen years, you really do wear that many hats, even if a talented specialist can run circles around you in most of your skillsets.

My profiles at O'Reilly Media, A List Apart, Opera Software, and digital-web.com are all beacons of brevity. They don't tell you that I'm part of a five-generation legacy in the media trades, that I'm literate in two languages other than English, or even begin to hint that I identify strongly as a native Oregonian.

The message that I work hard to put across in all of my writing about Web development is that effective sitebuilding is a question of habits and attention: talent certainly helps, but it helps most if it leads you to a better process and the ability to grasp the "big picture" of a site in a hurry.