In total agreement: “Hold on to a good web developer!”

Tina Roth Eisenberg, a.k.a. swissmiss, most recently re-launched her popular eclectic design blog. The latest incarnation looks and feels simple, smoothly simple, especially with regards to the filter-by-category and search features sensibly placed within a strong sense of grid. Developer John Ford’s handiwork is clearly instrumental in helping to transform Tina’s former Typepad blog into a Wordpress version. His considerable contributions, along with the work-intensive content migration to a new platform, make Eisenberg’s kudos to her developer quite justified. But it underscores a recurrent scenario:

It’s easy to be captivated by a site’s interface and interaction, to the point of not reflecting on who and what connects the two. A site, in whatever form, can be broken down into the major functions that feel finite when the URL displays its suite of screens. There’s a lot going on behind the scenes that make the front a seamless and working facade.

This is second nature to user experience designers, web developers and web-savvy surfers. And these are not the only groups to whom Tina serves content. The reminder applies to everyone curious about what’s beneath the surface and not indifferent to what makes the front end possible, with every interaction.

Furthermore, Tina notes Ford’s ambition in making the site better: “Come’on, make it a little harder for me. We can do more than that!” A good web developer doesn’t only remain heads-down, without submerging, from code mechanics. Being a soundboard for a designer’s (and anybody else’s) ideas is an advantage and one worth nurturing, in a client-server-back-to-client kind of way.

Beyond the refresh of swissmiss, it’s refreshing to read Tina’s tenet of sticking to a good web developer once you find him or her—namely by working hard and having fun as a natural by-product. As Ford put it, “It’s so much fun building beautiful sites!”

For those, be they designer or developer, seeking to share creative reality, access CollabFinder as one of your steps. I did, and found a developer worth holding on to (details arriving in due time).