Over the past half a decade or so we’ve seen an increasingly large numbers of non-developers take on that role in the name of gaining their freedom from jobs they feel “stuck” in. It began with blogging and marketing and even writing ebooks, with WordPress as the foundation for these endeavors. Yet for many, myself included, making a solid, family supporting living online required a more concrete, mainstream (or whatever you want to call it) skill-set. Not necessarily to replace our initial endeavors, but to add a necessary foundation for calling ourselves “professionals” on the web.
So this unique, yet not so minute, group of webpreneurs is filled with talent that is probably not majoring in coding skills, but is abundant with creativity and insight. These fellow web-developers-by-necessity WordPress users have a whole lot to offer those seeking website services, but need the right tools to help bridge the gap between their current coding capabilities and the needs of their potential clients. And that’s where we come in!
Coming From Experience
I write this from the perspective of one who’s been there and done that. A geek at heart, but more of the creative, intuitive mind that doesn’t necessarily find PHP to be their natural second language, I started off as a blogger, then marketer, then e-book writer, and then web developer, needing something more solid to pay my mortgage and feed my family. For me, I guess I had just enough extra geek in me to find that developing WordPress themes and Plugins fit my own purpose in this WordPress community, but again, much of it was hard work and not as much a natural extension of myself. I love to write, ponder life’s mysteries, and try to figure out the best solution for the latest problem, but all along the way WordPress Web Development, in one form or another, has been my professional rock.
When I first began my WP Web Design journey I ran into the problem of not having the right tools at my disposal. This was back in 2009 and the vast majority of WP themes and Plugins provided very little in the way of coding assistance. You were either expected to code it yourself or be confined to the defaults provided by the developer. So I set out to develop my own tools, if for no other reason than to make my own web development more intuitive and less code-heavy.
My theme at the time, Frugal, quickly caught on with other not-born-with-code-editor-in-hand WP freedom-seekers and from there I was able to further establish my online business as a WordPress product provider. I had found my place as one who could help bridge that gap between those who know they can create useful websites for compensation, and the results necessary to accommodate this ever-growing Internet need.
More Than Just Tools
What Cobalt Apps offers is much more than products that do things, but we put a lot of emphasis on growing with the user and encouraging them to further their web developer skills. We do this not only with the typical knowledge bases of information and tutorials that show how to do this or that, but we’ve also built into our products a way of developing websites that results in reward when new skills are attained. The better you get at coding, typography, general design, and the many other facets of building WordPress websites, the more rewarding you’ll find our products to be. They typically go from “learning curve” to getting into a “flow” that only gets better the more you use them.
Even the custom coding aspect of our tools include teaching mechanisms, from our CSS and PHP Builders to the way in which you can hack away at your design using a kind of code/option hybrid such as our Custom Templates, Labels, Conditionals, Widget Areas, Hook Boxes combo found in both of our flagship products.
Yet none of this means anything to those either naturally skilled at the art of ones and zeros or simply in need of a pre-customized design they never intend on digging into. They may be seeking their freedom online like those mentioned above, but their needs do not involve a bridging tool such as Dynamik Website Builder or the Genesis Extender Plugin. They are not our audience. Our audience is the do-it-yourselfer, freedom seeking, creatives, who just need the right kind of screwdriver to get the job done, along with the support and growth possibilities in place to remain forward focused. And that’s why we exist.
So if you’re a freedom-seeking webpreneur who finds the traditional WordPress theme too code-involved, but the we’ll-do-it-all-for-you, way-too-much-hand-holding solutions overly invasive with a low ceiling for future growth, then you may want to give our solutions a look. Check out the conversations in our Community Forum, and feel free to email us questions directly. We can’t promise the moon, but we’re good at providing the means to pursue your foundational online goals.
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