I live and work in New York. I was born and raised in Izmir, a coastal city in Turkey. I received my B.A. in Business Administration from Marmara University of Istanbul in 2003.  I came to United States in 2004. Since then I was traveling back and forth between Turkey and US because of my business. In 2008, I settled down in New York. I have been living a diverse and rich life which brings fullness to everything I do in my professional and personal life.

College Years and Early Career

In 1997, I moved to Istanbul for my college degree in Business Administration. At college, I started to do rock climbing and mountaineering which gave me the chance to discover all aspects of life (also the reason of why my college education took so long). In 1999 while I was still studying, I started to work as a tour leader for trekking trips in various mountains of  Turkey. These trekking trips gave me a great chance to discover the beauties of  Turkey and Turkish People. I also met my life partner, Derval, in one of these trips in Kackar Mountains.

Life getting serious

I graduated from college in 2003. In 2004, moved to United States and got married. In 2005, I joined the Terra Anatolia team as a partner and guide. Since  then, even though I officially lived in New York, I spend most of my time in Turkey by administering Terra Anatolia and leading trips in the mountains. In 2008, I had to make a decision between a career in Turkey or living in the States. An injury and being married didn’t leave me too much choice and I decided to settle down in New York with my wife. Since then I am a full time New Yorker.

Web Design

I have never had an education in web design or any kind of training about internet. I’ve learned everything from books (thanks to American library system) and from a crazy little thing called Google. I did not know much about web design or web marketing when our webmaster screwed us on our company website. Thanks to our webmaster, he is the reason why I decided to start learning web design and internet marketing.

Since then I have been continuously trying to learn every aspects of internet. On the path of learning, I realized that focusing on Content Management Systems (CMS) and other web publishing platforms would be much better for me rather than trying to learn every single programming language with a career background full of mountains. My first CMS was TYPO3 which was far beyond than my skills at the time. But probably Kasper Skårhøj, the creator of TYPO3 was the biggest reason why I didn’t give up and keep  up trying to learn. I was amazed by the skills of this amazing programmer.

In time, I made my way through Joomla and WordPress. Because of I believe that proficiency in these 2 software is one of the necessary keys if somebody wants to be successful in today’s web design and internet marketing. Nowadays I give all my focus on these 2 software. I design all my websites with these 2 software and I also create templates, modules and plugins to give something back to these Open Source software societies.

Search Engine Optimization and Online Marketing

While I was working with Terra Anatolia, I realised that only way for us to be successful is to conquer the internet world. Because we were a new company, nobody knew us, we didn’t have too much money to advertise like others and there was too many big fish to compete with. Needless to say, I manage to conquer the internet world in our field.
Since than I strongly believe that any company who wants to be successful has to have a strong online profile. As you can see, all of my online experiences come from real life challenges. I had to be successful in order to survive.

Non-professional side

Outside of my work, I enjoy cooking, delicious food, photography, fishing and mountains whenever I get chance.