R. Dustin Web Studio

Introduction

One of the main goals of this section is for you to get to know what we are all about. The best way to see this is to talk with the founder of r. dustin web studio: Randy Dustin. Randy officially founded r. dustin web studio in September of 2003 and we cornered him recently to talk with him.

r. dustin web studio (RDWS): Hi Randy, thanks for taking the time to visit with us today.

Randy: No problem.

RDWS: Can you fill us in on how you got into web development?

Randy: Sure. I built my first website in college around 1998 using Netscape Composer. It was pretty bad; I had very colorful patterned backgrounds and lots of animated GIFs all competing for attention. The first page took forever to load because I had an audio file of a door creaking and an animated GIF of a door opening and closing. I really didn't get started coding websites much until 2000 when I graduated from College. I began by searching the internet looking for websites that I liked and picking them apart until I could understand how they worked. I used the text editor Notepad then.

I was in a band we called "seed" at that time as well, and we wanted a website so I made six different versions of the website over the next couple of years and posted them on one of my Geocities free accounts. These websites really helped me search out good instruction on how to make websites that were usable and nice looking. In 2001 I felt that my church district's website could use some tweaking. The main graphic was stretched and some of the links were unreachable on a screen resolution of 800x600. I decided to make those few changes and send them to the webmaster of the site so he could use them. The short version is that they asked me to take over the website. When the church restructured in 2003 they asked me to develop the new mission center's website and I started realizing that I loved to build websites and it could be really fun to get paid to do it, so I officially named r. dustin web studio.

RDWS: You seem so passionate when you speak about websites. Why is that?

Randy: Well, there's just something about taking a blank text file and writing a bunch of tags and words and then seeing a visually appealing website from that. One of the things I love about web design is that each project is different. Each person who comes to me and wants a website wants it to convey a certain feel, meaning, and look. It is up to me along with our graphic designer, to make it happen. I love the challenge of making that happen.

RDWS: Why is your company unique?

Randy: One unique aspect of r. dustin web studio is that we are dedicated to making the site a true reflection of our customer's vision. It is very important for a website to be true to it's purpose and we work very hard to make that happen every time. Our passion is in creating web sites that allow their owner to minister effectively whether it is a church or an individual. Another way we are unique is that we are deeply rooted in helping churches develop an online presence. We were asked to develop a database driven site, that could be updated by individuals who don't know "html" programming and offer it to each congregation in our mission center. We are in the process of helping three congregations get their sites set up right now. This site can be configured for any church who wants to make themselves available online.

RDWS: Thank you so much for taking time out of your day to chat with us today. We look forward to talking with you again soon.

Randy: Thank you for listening.