My name is Bob Bloom.

In this picture, my daughter and I are en route to a Laravel Toronto meet-up.

I am a independent web applications developer, specializing in the superb Laravel Framework.

I joined the Richmond Hill Board of Trade in May 2018 because it would be a great way to meet the very local owner-managers that I seek to build high RoI web applications.

I attended my first event short after joinging, an "After 5" event. I was pretty sure that I had made a huge mistake joining the RHBOT, thinking instead that the market for what I do is with large companies or with agencies.

I then recorded my monthly podcast, which clocked in at an hour -- three times longer than my usual "long-ish" podcast.

My initial impression is that RHBOT members are concerned with having a low-cost "brochure" style website. Naturally, these websites are WordPress sites. And, of course, the number one concern RHBOT members have with their low-cost WordPress sites is SEO.

You can read my transcript (I do veer a bit in the podcast) here.

A day after the "After 5" event, PHP Roundtable published a podcast devoted to "All Things WordPress". They scoffed at the idea of building a custom blog program, but that's exactly what I did with my Laravel Framework based web application software: LaSalle Software Version One.

It was refreshing to write a fully modern web app. It was liberating to control the functionality. I released a fully functioning, free and open source, web app with blogging and other features, with which to base client engagements.

Version Two of my software has turned into more than just a code clean-up. It is in the process of being re-written for a micro service environment.

For owner-managers who want to automate processes, who want multiple user-facing sites, and who have specialized needs, then it's time to look at web applications.