I'm Michael Slater, a web developer, software developer and entrepreneur. I've done web design starting with static sites in the good old days, then PHP, then Ruby on Rails.
More recently, a partner and I have built a new class of content management and database system,
Webvanta. We're trying to make it possible for freelance front-end designers to build sites with significant back-end capability, without having to depend on programmers.
If you're interested in checking it out, we're looking for beta testers, and I can extend a free account to you for several months.