Tony Aly, CEO of Paradise Modern, Inc., was supposed to go to law school. He graduated from the University of Virginia in 1997 with a degree in Anthropology, and quickly applied to law schools around the US, several of which offered him admission and scholarships. Instead of attending right away, however, he decided to take a year to find himself. After two months in West Africa, he found malaria instead, and opted to return to Virginia and take a job as a legal assistant. The work did not suit him, however, and when one of the lawyers he worked for offered him a 50% stake in an adult site (in exchange for doing all the work) Tony jumped at the opportunity to do something different, and to get involved with the Internet phenomenon that was blowing up at the time.

The site was a subscription-driven content gallery, and it made two major demands on his time. First, link exchange was the primary mechanism for acquiring traffic at that time, and the sheer volume of links that needed to be tracked and displayed was overwhelming. Second, like all adult sites, it was imperative that the site continue to increase its content on a regular basis to keep existing customers happy. The site needed a database and a Content Management System, so Tony quickly delved into ColdFusion and SQL. It didn’t take long for him to build a bigger business as a web developer than as co-owner of a small adult site, so in 1998 he decided to pursue web development full-time. His early work in the adult space has served him and his clients well, as adult sites continue to advance the art of internet marketing.

In 1999, Website Results, one of the first major SEO firms, hired Tony to help code its application. Not long after his stint there, Website Results was acquired by 24/7 for a huge sum. The experience of working with Website Results proved invaluable, as Tony learned the fundamentals of SEO and the value of leveraging a database to deliver well-optimized content to the search engines.

In 2000, Tony joined AutoBytel as a web developer, and quickly transitioned into a role there as a liason between the IT and Marketing teams. He personally launched the user state management system to provide behavior-targeting functionality for the Marketing team. Working so closely with both teams and helping to facilitate the give-and-take between them taught him the special skills necessary to get things done in a large organization, and the importance of cultivating a fluency in both languages--Marketing and Tech-Speak--for achieving success on the Web.

Tony left AutoByTel for an equity position as Lead Web Developer for FireRiver, a Dot Com Startup that promised to link buyers and sellers of goods. The site was completed and launched in early 2001, but by then the DotCom bubble had burst and FireRiver did not get its second round of funding.

In 2001, Tony co-founded All Effort, an internet marketing firm. Before long, All Effort amassed an impressive client list as early providers of Inktomi Paid Inclusion, and then organic on-page solutions. Tony coded the app that was used to deliver pages to client sites, which is now available to the public at StaticPageBuilder.com, a Paradise Modern property.

In 2007, Tony left All Effort to found Paradise Modern. He has personally coded, supervised, managed, and marketed hundreds of sites. He remains a devoted ColdFusion/Blue Dragon coder, though he is not attached to any particular database platform (and the team often delivers in PHP). He is known as an internet marketer, an SEO, and a web developer. He does not have spare time.