Design & Code by: RayAna M. Park Résumé (PDF) Curriculum Vitae Questions/Comments: rayanasays earlyspark.com Philadelphia, PA

View my résumé and CV to see my qualifications in website design and digital photography. If you have any questions about the services offered, please email me.

History

earlyspark.com was registered in 2004 but its conception goes back further than that. In 1999, I made my first n00by website at Drexel University. At that time, I was discovering local rock music and started going to some shows and wrote down my "reviews" in the music section of my frame-based website. Eventually, I wanted to re-do the site and dedicate it to Philadelphia's local music scene. rayemopromo.org was around for a little while but it was on a free server that died often so I decided to actually buy server space for the sake of stability and silentstruggles.com was born.

silentstruggles (2002) was the most successful site I had so far. I visited L.A. to do a video interview of my favorite band (SayAnything), went to numerous local shows, received demos in the mail, and produced my own business cards (they were printed out on manila folders). I wrote up my reviews and published that on the site, along with pictures I may have taken from shows. Unfortunately, at that time, I was still hard-coding all my pages using html and notepad, which made updating a page absolutely dreadful. There was even a page where you could sort by title or date but this page was actually two separate pages, not dynamically created. so silentstruggles was short-lived but it propelled me to learn how to create a dynamic website using PHP and MySQL.

School and work had been keeping me busy but I had finally come up with another site: playitloudphilly.com (2003). Using my new programming skills, I tried to revive the spirit of silentstruggles but I ran into design issues. I couldn't decide if I wanted a liquid or static layout nor did I really like the overall design of the site. As I struggled with these issues, the content became stale and pilp died prematurely.

After registering earlyspark in 2004, I battled with the design issues again and went through almost 10 different designs before finally becoming satisfied with this one in November 2006. I put to use the skills I learned at work and gleaned much knowledge from various books, magazines, and podcasts.

earlyspark

The title also took me a while to conjure up, I wanted something special. It stands for that initial feeling you get when you come up with a great idea, that "a-ha!" moment, that early spark. It may be a lofty goal but I want this site to encompass all of my interests, to make room for them in this one place. I like learning new things, I like starting projects, I like everything interesting, everything interests me. This is the beginning, this is a start. - "it's the start of something great"