Seacoastonline.com:
A local businesswoman with a reputation for bringing her clients’ Internet aspirations to life has brought a new look to the town’s Web site.
Web surfers may have noticed over the past few weeks that the town’s site, once dominated with shades of nondescript beige and containing some links that went nowhere, now features an assortment of eye-pleasing greens and an overhead shot of the Main Street bridge. The new site, some parts of which are still being put together, was a volunteer effort by Web designer Jennifer O’Neill of Moxdog Hosting and Design.“It’s still a work in progress …; but it’s a lot more friendly and active than what we had before,” said Town Moderator Tim Louis this week. “The town should really be thankful that we have someone who can take charge and guide the development of this.”
O’Neill, a local resident and work-at-home mom who will soon mark her sixth year in Web design, said the town’s online offering is one of the most recent of the scores of Web sites she’s put together over the years. During a recent interview, O’Neill recalled how she experienced “an epiphany” several years ago around the time of her 30th birthday and wanted to try her hand at something other than the insurance industry career she’d been pursuing in Massachusetts.
Her own native talents and the burgeoning Internet industry of the late 1990s convinced O’Neill that Web design was the way to go, and she later pursued a course in Web design at the New England Institute of Art in Brookline, Mass. With the change in careers, O’Neill and her husband Tom also left Lynn, Mass., eventually choosing Raymond for its friendly small-town atmosphere as well as the ease of access to Manchester and Portsmouth.
While O’Neill said there are many Web designers in the region, she never finds herself with a shortage of work, and on any given day she can find herself working on custom Web sites for as many as five clients. Despite the workload, she finds time to care for her son, 20-month-old Jack, and she said she still manages to keep family and career in balance even as the pace picks up.
Logo from MoxDog.