July 2009 - present
PUA Training |
I've recently started work at PUA Training as a web developer dealing with their internal websites. These vary in type and size, but all deal with various aspects of the self-help that the company specialises in.
Below are the sites I've been involved in during my time at PUA Training:
- PUA Training
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This is the main site of the company, and deals with the main products which the company offers, from bootcamps and seminars, to books and DVDs. The site itself is based on the CakePHP framework, which enables the content to be distributed to more than one medium and allowing for the content to be efficiently linked together.
Skills used: PHP, MySQL, HTML, CSS, Javascript, CakePHP
- PUA Forum
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The forum is used as a platform to bring together knowledge from a mixture of sources, with a large community of people coming together to divulge, share and listen to self-help advice. It has over 70,000 registered users, and more than 200,000 articles, making it a huge resource of information.
The forum itself is based on phpBB with a nice rich custom skin. Part of my jobs here were to fix the chat module, which runs on 123FlashChat and integrates quite nicely with phpBB, and reduce the page load times from >10 seconds to >3 by optimising graphics and SQL queries.
Skills used: PHP, MySQL, HTML, CSS, Javascript, phpBB
- PUA Training Vault
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This site is a resource for some of the video content created for and by the company. It uses a custom framework to display the video clips, all of which are sourced from a variety of locations including YouTube and Viddler.
Skills used: PHP, MySQL, HTML, CSS
- Get The Guy
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While the other sites are mainly male-orientated, this site is specifically aimed at women wanting to attract that special guy. There are two parts to the site; the main area and the blog. The main area uses a custom-built CMS that was in-place when I joined. The blog is based on WordPress, which I installed and skinned to bring it in-line with the rest of the site. The blog also has also been integrated with Twitter, some of which was achieved through the TweetSuite module, the rest by custom AJAX code I wrote for the purpose using the Twitter API.
Skills used: PHP, MySQL, HTML, CSS, Javascript, AJAX, WordPress, Twitter
- NLP Creations
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This site deals with the NLP aspect of the self-help training, and comprises of the main site and a blog to accompany it. As part of my work maintaining this site, I had to re-skin the entire thing based on a design sent to me as a Photoshop image.
Because the site alreaqdy existed and could not afford too much downtime, I had to develop the new style in a way that would require the most minimal of structural markup changes, something I achieved though CSS. The blog, based on WordPress underwent the same treatment, with the end result that a visitor can move seamlessly from the main site to the blog without noticing any discernable difference in styling.
Skills used: PHP, HTML, CSS, WordPress
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Interspersed Freelance |
Alongside my previous jobs, I've taken on the below freelance projects:
- Home.corp
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Home.corp already had a site, but it was built entirely in Flash, had no SEO and no CMS. Because of this, I was tasked with rebuilding it in such a way that it would have a comfortable CMS and would be picked up by search engines. To achieve this, I rebuilt the site from the ground up, gathering information needed for the custom data model, and building a bespoke CMS for the purpose.
The CMS deals with creating custom heading graphics using a font that had minor structural changes made to it, auto-playback of video clip playlists in such a way that the clip currently playing can always be linked to via grabbing the URL of the current page, something which could not be done on the previous site.
More recently I was asked to add an image gallery for one director where normally it would be a video gallery. The CMS was amended and the front-end altered to make use of an AJAX gallery I created for the site.
Skills used: PHP, MySQL, HTML, CSS, AJAX, Flash, ActionScript
- Visitor Tracking
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I've developed a visitor tracking platform in my own time, which provides visually real-time visitor statistics, in tables and graphs, showing metrics such as visits distributed by time and day, individual user visit paths, and browser capabilities. I've successfully deployed this on my own site, and a few at blue, as my stats offered far more UA information than the server stats which were in-place there before.
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November 2007 - June 2009
blue Post Productions |
I've worked at blue Post Productions in London as a web developer since November 2007. The projects I have worked on there have generally been in the media field, as this is what blue deals with.
I have also introduced several procedures at work for the department, such as setting up a Mantis installation for bug-tracking and basic project documentation and a more convenient back-up procedure. This has been a great aid in managing open issues with systems and keeping documentation up-to-date for other people in the department when I'm absent.
Below is a list of some of the projects I've worked on whilst at blue Post Productions:
- Project Database
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The requirements for this project were quite interesting. Essentially, this had to be a multi-user system whereby users entered information about various projects. Previously, all of this information exchange was done with a spreadsheet document in a round-robin approach, whereby the document was sent on once a change had been made. This was a slow method, and prone to problems when people were not in a position to pass on the document.
A key component to this system was the necessity for users to be able to update the same record at the same time. I solved this problem by creating a very simple versioning system which would handle updates based on the original user who made the record. Deviations from the data that the owner of a record entered into the system are recognised as new versions of the same record, and are visually marked as such.
The other part of this system is an automatic email delivery system, that is able to notify the users of changes made to a project. This enables users to view updates to project they are interested in.
Skills used: PHP, MySQL, HTML, CSS
- Celebrities World Wide
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CWW originally had a website developed in ColdFusion. I was tasked to port it to PHP as the ColdFusion site was too slow. As part of this process I redeveloped the search algorithms to use only one SQL statement instead of five, and enhanced the search to find matches for mis-spelled words based on their sounds rather than a pre-determined list.
The site then required a re-design to bring it more up-to-date, and as part of this process I optimised it for search engines, which has since greatly increased the traffic to the site. A lot of functionality was added to the site as part of this re-design, mostly with additional information being added to a celebrity profile, and also the ability to search for this in the advanced search section of the site.
Skills used: PHP, MSSQL, HTML, CSS
- blue Post Production
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The blue site underwent a complete redevelopment. I developed a custom CMS for it to allow other members of staff to update the site. One part of this CMS allowed heading images to be created in the corporate font in various widths and with various word-wrap settings for use on assorted pages on the site.
Skills used: PHP, MySQL, HTML, Javascript (for email spam protection), CSS
- Digital Delivery System
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This system has been one of the toughest challenges to date. It operates mostly as a web interface for the management of an FTP server, automatically handling users and group permissions. My knowledge of the Linux platform has been a great advantage here, as getting this sort of communcation from the web interface to the FTP server would require much more work and greater costs with Windows.
As the system is multimedia-based, I originally incorporated a video transcoder into it, allowing small web-ready browse clips to be created in FLV format from a range of others including MPEG, Quicktime and Windows Media format. This was later removed as it was felt that it would be better to play the clips that were directly uploaded so as to avoid the delay that transcoding created.
Basic file management is also a part of this system, allowing files to be moved between folders and shared easily among multiple users, all of which is instantly reflected via FTP software.
The last part of the system includes an email management area. This is able to track all emails sent from the system, reporting any errors encountered, and it can also determine whether an email has been read or not with a high degree of accuracy. This is important, as a lot of emails are created with this system, such as when users are created or new files are available on the FTP system for a user.
Skills used: PHP, Bash, MySQL, HTML, Javascript for context menus, CSS & in-depth Linux server administration
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July 2006 - October 2007
HSBSG Design |
For one-and-a-half years I have spent working at a local design company, HSBSG Design, where I was the only web developer, and was involved in the decision-making of several key areas within the company, including price-setting, procedure layouts and initiating key services.
The main role of the job was to communicate with the clients and designer, via meetings, phone calls and emails, in a way that allowed me to fully understand the clients wishes, and clearly elaborate my own ideas. Here are some of the websites I have worked on, and in all but two of the cases, I was the only developer:
- Ferro Design
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This site is a portfolio site to show the catering design works completed by Ferro Design. On this site I only worked on the HTML area, which was meant to emulate the Flash design as closely as possible, for all visitors who did not have the Flash player.
Skills used: HTML, Javascript for inline popups, CSS
- HSBSG Design
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The website of the company I worked for, built around a flexible database backend, allowing it to be easily updated. The site was designed to be fully accessible for all visitors, regardless of viewing medium or disability.
The Flash animations at the top of the site were all developed by myself. Most are interactive in some form, although no reference is made of this, so visitors instead are left to find this out for themselves. Javascript is used to include the Flash animations, in order to work around the plugin limitations in IE6 and Opera (the user does not have to click to activate the Flash movie). The traditional method is left as a fallback for the 6% of users who either have no script support, or have turned it off.
As well as the Flash animations, a couple of games are in the site, both of which were developed by me. They are not meant to be a serious showcase of my work, as I only spent a couple of hours on each, they are just meant as a form of light entertainment for visitors, should they wish.
Skills used: HTML, PHP, MySQL (all page content sourced from a database), Javascript, CSS, ActionScript (on Flash animations and Sudoku game)
- Camis Components
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This was an existing site built on the OSCommerce platform that HSBSG Design took over management of, and required some changes to be made to the administration section, the cost display, and some other more aesthetic changes. One of the greatest additions was to accomodate the Google Checkout payment method. Due to the particular licensing requirements of this service, it could not be integrated into the OSCommerce in the typical manner, presenting some minor challenges.
Skills used: HTML, CSS, PHP (adding to existing OSCommerce modules, integrating Google Checkout), MySQL (adding to existing OSCommerce modules)
- Camis Distributions
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After a period of management of Camis Components, the task of managing the other Camis websites. Mostly, this involved minor adjustments to be made to various sections of the websites. As part of the management, all the Camis sites were migrated to a new web hosting package, which involved adjustments to be made to each website to allow for database and path changes.
Skills used: HTML, CSS
- Sun View Villa
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Sun View Villa was used as an on-line advertisement and contact platform. The site relies on a CMS which I had custom built, which allowed the site to be easily updated using a WYSIWYG editor. One addition to the CMS was a calendar module, which allowed the owner to mark off parts of the day as booked. This was the most suitable method of indicating to the visitors this information, and is easy for the owner to use.
Skills used: HTML, CSS, Javascript (adding to existing TinyMCE modules), PHP (used in creating the whole CMS), MySQL (page content, user information and navigation details are all database driven)
- Surface World Show
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The website for Surface World Show is a site made to give details about the show in question, such as sponsors, location and directions. This site makes use of the CMS I developed (as used for Sun View Villa above), and has a couple of added features built into the it, including a PDF upload module, and an extension to the image manager which updates the Flash image fader on the website. The Flash fader itself uses an external text file to source its images, making it easy for the CMS to update.
Skills used: HTML, CSS, PHP (used in creating the whole CMS), MySQL (page content, user information and navigation details are all database driven), ActionScript (in Flash image fader), Javascript (form validation on registration page)
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August 2005 - June 2006 |
For a year before this I had experience working in a nightclub in Southampton called Academy, during my last year of university. Part of my work here involved me working on my own small bar where on which I was always the highest taker. Other jobs there involved stock taking, promotional work, and standard bar work.
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February 2004 - August 2005 |
Previous to this I worked at Primark (also in Southampton.) This was for a year and a half across my first two years at university. I received customer services training here, as well as being head of a department for the weekend shifts on which I worked.
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2000 - June 2003 |
Before university I had spent 3 years, two of which were while I was at school completing my A-levels, working at Tesco's in Uxbridge. Over the course of my work there, I gained experience in a company initiative which was focused on reducing loss in the store. This involved regular meetings with management and also giving training to other members of staff. Alongside this, I was given my own section of the store to manage, and had training in the ambient, frozen, fresh, grocery, bakery and till areas of the store.
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