Today’s interview is with Curtis McHale, web designer/developer. Read more about him.

1. To begin with, thank you for agreeing to do this interview. Could you tell us where you’re from and how you got started in the field?


I live about 1 hour east of Vancouver BC, though I grew up in the Toronto area. So that means I am a Canadian. I got started in the web design field while in college. I actually have a degree in Psychology but with a few months left in my degree I decided that I really didn’t want to get into counselling. I had been hacking around on code and design for about two years just because I thought it was fun and decided to make it my fulltime occupation. I had already been working in-house for a local canoe shop as sales and marketing which involved some web work. So I just decided to finish off my degree (because with 2 months left you should just finish) and then got a job fulltime as a web designer and developer for Insight for Living Canada.

2. Why do you use WordPress for your projects?


I use WordPress because of how easy it is to use and how flexible it is. There are very few things that you can’t do with WordPress very easily, especially now that we have custom taxonomy and post types in WordPress 3.0. WordPress is also easy for clients to use. Adding content is really easy. I’ve used Drupal on a big project and even the content entry was nothing short of a pain for clients despite all of the work we did.

3. What’s your best projects?


My biggest project was launching the website for www.insightforliving.ca while I worked in-house for them. I built the entire e-commerce portion and managed an outside company for the Drupal CMS part of the site. I was the only person that could code at all so it was a big project for me to juggle while working on the HTML emails, plug my daily content related duties.

The project I love the most is a personal one that can be found at www.fraservalleywhitewater.com. It’s one of my hobbies (both the paddling and the design/coding).

My best project is probably the blog/site/podcast I plan to launch in the next two weeks. I’ve always been interested by the workflows of people so I’m starting a site and podcast to discuss how people do what they do. It will range from designing databases to client acquisition to designing websites. It will focus on the way people do things and the tools they use to get them done. You’ll be able to find it at www.yourworkflow.ca.

4. How ofter do you post on your blog?


I try to post on my blog every Tuesday. I’ll admit that it doesn’t always happen but most often I have content ready for a Tuesday launch.

5. What’s your activities when you aren’t in front of a computer?


My biggest activity would be kayaking. As I mentioned above I designed and built the site for www.fraservalleywhitewater.com. I also write for it occasionally and take about 50% of the pictures that get shown on any of the posts. I paddled about 100 days a year. Since my wife paddles too it’s a pretty easy thing to convince her to let me do. More often she’s jealous if she can’t get out of work for the day and go boating with me.