Hello Divi University!

This is Randal, and I am a "retired" illustrator, web designer, and agency owner who now only takes on freelance WordPress/DIVI projects that I can handle myself.

I built my first website using a PowerMac and "PageBuilder" at birkey.com in 1996 to display my illustration portfolio online. We were using 2400-baud modems at that time! It was a big deal when I got my first 56K modem!

I transitioned from illustrator to web-designer when my agency and designer clients started asking me to design & develop their first websites! As the technology advanced, I stayed ahead of the curve and eventually joined a software firm in 1998 to build a web design division.

In 2007, I sold that division and started a new partnership with a technology consulting firm. I repeated the same pattern, building another web agency within that firm, until I retired in 2016.

So, I have over 35 years of full-time experience in the creative illustration and visual design communication field... before retirement. More since then.

I've been using Apple Mac and Adobe software products since they both entered the marketplace. I used some Adobe products before they purchased competitor companies, such as Macromedia, Aldus, and others. Even though I have used many other big-name CMS platforms for clients such as McDonald's, State Farm, and Safelite, I've been a WordPress fan since 2006-2007.

Currently, I take on projects that come to me by word-of-mouth, and that I can complete myself in WordPress using DIVI 4 and now 5. My clients tend to be small businesses and non-profits.

I host all of my client projects (60-70) on the Cloudways platform on two Digital Ocean cloud servers. Another larger association client hosts the sites I build for them (another 50 or so DIVI4-5 sites) on Siteground.

I ran across Mak on YouTube when he was doing videos for Elegant Themes on DIVI 4. As DIVI 5 was approaching, I was intrigued by his design system approach, and the more I dived into DIVI 5, the more it made sense.

Now, I build new sites ONLY in DIVI 5 with the KrafterPro Design System. And, I am currently migrating many of my DIVI 4 client sites to DIVI 5. Mak and this web community have been a huge help!

I am looking forward to meeting more of you, beginners, amateurs, and professionals in this community and sharing experiences, knowledge, tips, fixes, workarounds, etc. I'm happy to help anyone that I can using my experience and knowledge. Please feel free to reach out if you have any questions you think I might be able to help you with.

And THANK YOU, Mak, for creating this platform!