Welcome to All-Terrain Monkey.com, my online home for my web design gallery and portfolio. The links to the left will take you to slides where you can find out more information about my design philosophy, see sites I have created, hear from satisfied customers, and contact me if you are interested in work.

I am currently available to take on new contracts, though this status can and does change often depending on my workload and time availability. If you ever have any questions please contact me to check on my status.

One piece of information you will not find on this site, however, is the price I charge for a website, and the reason for this is simple; there isn't a set one. Each site is different, and each client as well. Once I have a decent idea of what is desired and how much time would be involved in the creation I can give an accurate quote based on how many hours I believe a site will take. Some designers charge a flat fee no matter how much work is involved, but I prefer to tailor my pricing as much as I tailor my solutions. Payment options can be arranged in many different ways over many different schedules, so, no matter what your budget, I assure you the time spent talking to me will not be wasted.

My first design philosophy for gallery websites centered on showcasing images of an artist's work is simple; the artwork should be the centerpiece of the entire page. Nothing should overshadow or divert the focus of the viewer from what the artist has worked so hard to create. Anything that detracts from the focus should be as minimal as possible. Most sites have simple, two-color themes with little "noise" in the form; solid color blocks of neutral or complementary colors.

My second design philosophy is to ensure the artists have as much time as possible to pursue their craft; to that end, any interface for inputting items into the system has to be clean, clear-cut, and quick to use and navigate. Time spent searching for an item or figuring out how to work something is time away from productive work.

The third tenet is intuitive; even though a site may be robust and complex the user should not have to learn any more of the underpinnings of how the site works than they want. Input fields have buttons to quickly help users upload links, change text styles, and create images. Content creation is standardized throughout the various interfaces and customized to the individual's needs. As one client put it, "Using the system is so easy my mother could do it."

The fourth tenet I try to follow is portability of code. A solution for one site is often needed on others, so a modular design approach allows me to quickly implement new systems on existing sites with a minimal amount of rewriting and testing needed. If a client sees something new on one of my sites and wants it installed the process is normally swift and transparent.

I ask my clients to send in testimonials about their websites, which they are usually pretty enthusiastic to do. I'm always surprised by the response, and they always make me want to work that much harder on the next project. The entries are listed in alphabetic order, so I can't be accused of playing favorites :).

Anne Foerster, from Miniature Zone.net, writes, "John has done an absolutely amazing job on my website. I can't recall ever having anything this slick and professional, and the ease of use is astounding--even I can't screw this up! He has been right there along the way to incorporate changes, even when I had crazy ideas that required custom solutions. I told John at the beginning that I'm not one for bells and whistles and crazy amounts of Flash--I think people are here to see the minis. Thanks to my all-powerful Webmonkey, that's exactly what my site gives them!"

Jen Haley, from Paintrix-Miniatures.com, said, "Creating my site with John was a pleasure. He encouraged my input, but explained the possibilities and made helpful suggestions in areas where I was clueless. Once all my specific requirements were implemented, I was comfortable managing the site by myself in less than an hour. John understands how important seemingly trivial details--even tiny tweaks in color or layout--can be to a professional artist, and how critical is good presentation and accessibility in a website that also serves as a portfolio. Having seen other sites of his design, I felt sure that John could help me display my work at its very best. The result has surpassed my expectations."

Marike Reimer, from Destroyer Minis.com, succinctly said, "Have John design your website. It's what the cool kids are doing."

Below you will find a list of sites I have created, along with a brief description of the client's requirements and items of notice. All sites are listed alphabetically, once again, to save my bacon by not picking favorites.

The creation process usually involves a doodle, picture, or site the client likes, with the message for me to "make a site like this." Before I even start on any of the functional code of a site the design is completed as much as possible first; the form of the site and the representation to the user drives the functioning behind it. My first goal is to communicate with the client so I can get a clear idea of how they want their site to look and what functionality the site will offer. During this process I advise them on the technical feasibility of what they want as well as helping them test out artistic choices on the look of the site. The level of collaboration varies between the different clients, but in the end they always get a layout they are happy with.

Once the look and shape of the site is defined the work starts in earnest on the various technical sections using MySQL databases and PHP for the scripting language. The degree of automation desired, different categories of information to present, and the technical considerations behind them are discussed and clarified at length. A balance is always struck between degree of customization and ease of use; the client always gets an interface they can understand and use tailored directly to their needs.

Once the "backbone" aspects are finalized I go to work coding in earnest, creating databases and custom scripts to massage the data the user inputs into rich, meaningful screen translations for their friends, family, and clients to see. At all points during this process anything is still malleable, from the color of a piece of text to the amount of information stored about a piece.

Once the site is complete the work doesn't stop there. Often the client will find tweaks they could use to speed up their site usage or new ideas on how to lay things out after using the site for a short time; the site isn't finished until they say it is.

At all points in this process I spend as much time as needed communicating with the client to insure they understand the direction the site is going in and to insure I know what they want to steer it towards. The technology available to show information online in today's internet age is vast and complex, so I take my job of offering possibilities and explaining limitations clearly very seriously.

John "All-Terrain Monkey" Bonnot first saw a custom personalized website back in 1996. A student on his floor showed off his incredibly detailed site with the pinnacle being a line of text that flashed on the screen. Heady stuff, to be sure.

Five years later John was a Specialist in the United States Signal Corp and had his own webcomic, "Serving Time", about waiting tables. All of the HTML was hand-coded, and the update process for a new comic was becoming laborious, with all of the various links and archives having to be updated individually. Research was done, and after looking at some other webcomic (ye olde Penny Arcade) he saw all of the files ended in a mysterious .php instead of .html. Intrigued, he picked up a book, "PHP and MySQL Web Development" by Luke Welling and Laura Thomson, right before becoming Sergeant Bonnot and going overseas to Djibouti, Africa on a deployment.

There he learned the basic ins and outs of how to make a dynamically driven website, and Computer Gigalo (spelling intentional) was born. Due to links being passed around of military bloggers in warzones the site soon became a hit, and as the traffic kept jumping John fully realized the potential of having an easy to use site to generate content for thousands of hits a day.

A few years later, back to being plain ol' Mr. Bonnot again, saw him meet up with a painter by the name of Anne Foerster. Interested in selling items on eBay, and having seen the state of other painting sites on the net, he decided to go after the eBay market himself with a snazzy, well-made page. Mused and Abused v1.0 was whipped up and live in February of 2005, and has undergone serious revision work since then.

After his fellow painters saw how simple and easy it could be to maintain a web presence instead of onerous and laborious they slowly came to him asking for advice and to have him create sites for them. Each one that is finished adds another excited painter chastising the others, "Why don't you have a website? Just talk to John." After realizing there might be a market for more people wanting the same kind of treatment, John decided a new site needed to be born.

And so, All-Terrain Monkey was born. The name was a simple one, beyond being his online moniker; after traveling all over the United States and various deserts, jungles, and other environments while also virtually traversing numerous sites across the Internet for over a decade, All-Terrain describes him well. Just as a vehicle of the same description, John can go anywhere in all kinds of inclement conditions and Get The Job Done.

If you have perused this site and are either curious about any of the information on it, have a question or comment, or would like to discuss a possible website with me, please fill out the form below and hit submit. A valid email address is required to allow me to respond to you, so please check your spelling before submitting. You should receive an email shortly after sending with your message inside it to confirm its delivery; however, if you do not hear back from me in a reasonable amount of time, please feel free to resubmit your request just to insure it was not lost due to a hiccup.

Some of my websites have more bells and whistles than others, but all share common elements. Below are a list of site features I have created and used on my sites in the past.

News -- The display and archival of news items on my sites is always an automated process. The user types in a headline and a story and hits a submit button; from there the website automatically serves up the most recent stories on the News page along with auto-creating Archive pages, allowing readers to find any story in the entire system.

Galleries -- A gallery system on a site can be as simple as a single-tiered gallery for one type of product or a multi-threaded system able to cross reference multiple types of artwork. All gallery system automation is robust, allowing the user to quickly select images on the server, assign relevant information to them, and categorize them in numerous ways. The Gallery pages then customize what items are shown to the user based on what the user selects, creating a visual system the user can use as they want, rather than a static system tying them down to one way of viewing.

Random Elements of Interest -- On all of my sites randomly selected images appear in one or more sections on a site, adding both constant new visual interest and new navigation links taking viewers deeper into the site. Most internet users quickly scan a site and leave unless there is information of sufficient interest to keep them on the page, and randomly generated content and links help insure they spend more time looking at the items the client has created. All information for such systems is automated from the gallery, requiring no extra input, time, or consideration by the client.

Ebay Auction Highlighting -- For those clients that sell items on eBay automated systems are in place to allow them to input a target start date, eBay auction id, and auction end date and time for their sites. Any gallery items with that info pop up in a highly visible place on the site with quick links taking users directly to the auction. Once the auction completes the highlighted image is automatically removed, saving the client time and effort.

Articles and Links -- Items which are static and don't require much in the way of display formatting, like articles and links, are stored and shown in such a way to make editing quick and easy for the client of the site. Viewers are able to navigate them quickly, and in the case of articles link to specific pages inside them.

RSS Feeds -- RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds allow users to get information in their feed readers whenever a new item is posted on the website. The client can have almost any piece of information taken from their databases to create news stories, whether it's a new blog post, gallery item, ebay auction, article, or any other such item. All the client needs to do is inform me which ones they would like, and the rest of the system is automated with zero upkeep.