About Gradiate

Since the dawn of the world wide web in the mid-90s, there hasn't been an standard way of identifying *who did what* as far as building a web site is concerned.

Some ad-hoc techniques are still in play today, such as the designer or developer adding a small image in the footer of a web site, typically with some 'built by' text. Another old school technique is for developers to add some commented-out HTML code to the header of the web site, which is only visible when users view the source code.

Both techniques have SEO ramifications, as well as aesthetic and commercial overheads. More importantly, neither method goes any way to accurately describe who did what - it's more commonly just an ad for the person who was last able to insert their stamp into the original web site.

When Tim Berners-Lee first built the World Wide Web, he did it all himself: server, browser and web pages. And while all-rounders are still out there, more common is the diversification and specialization of the types of roles Web Professionals now occupy: art directors, site architects, database administrators, designers, coders, usability specialists, copywriters, server admins - and on and on...

With such a range of skills now in play to build a web site, the team behind Gradiate decided it would be high time to give these Web Professionals some well-deserved credit - a better/fairer/more complete way of attributing who did what to build web site.

Gradiate's goal is to become to the Web Industry what imdb.com is to the Movie Industry: a complete record of who built what site, and therefore, what sites a person has worked on in their career - an 'official' body of work.

As far as inspiration goes, there's none better: imdb.com is one of the world's oldest dynamic web sites - when most other web sites of the time were static HTML, IMDB was fully database driven, searchable, and growing at a huge rate.

The even more exciting, secondary aim of Gradiate is to take the records of who built what, and determine the top ranked Web Professionals as far as depth and breadth of their portfolio, and the size and reach of the web sites they've helped to create.

We'll be able to sort out the superstars from the wanna-be's, and be able to allow the public find Web Professionals either by speciality, experience, locality or by Rank.

OK, that should keep us busy for a few weeks!

AB & James