About Me

Web developer with 19 years’ commercial experience in building and maintaining a wide range of websites, including eCommerce and multi-language sites. Enjoy taking a website from start to finish, working on both front- and back-end parts. Comfortable meeting with customers to help guide the growth of their websites. Eager to make use of the new possibilities provided by HTML5 and CSS3.

Key Skills

  • HTML 5, CSS 3, LESS CSS
  • PHP 5, OOP, MVC (CodeIgniter framework)
  • Javascript (jQuery, AJAX, JSON, Prototype)
  • MySQL
  • Graphical Packages (Fireworks, Photoshop, Lightroom)

Employment

Realnet Ltd - February 2006 to present
Senior Web Developer
Starting as sole developer, I helped Realnet move from Lotus Domino to a LAMP approach and am now the senior developer working with a team of 2 others.  All e-commerce sites are built using a bespoke system developed by myself.

  • Taking concept files and creating fully-functional websites (usually based on PHP5, MySQL, HTML5, CSS3, jQuery)
  • Creating fully bespoke e-commerce websites using various payment gateways  (SagePay, Google Checkout, Paypal, Worldpay)
  • Setting up Wordpress blogs and theming them to integrate with existing websites
  • Various APIs such as Facebook, Google Maps and Twitter
  • Multi-language websites (inc. Russian and Chinese)
  • Basic UNIX administration eg CRON jobs, symbolic links
  • Using Google Analytics and A/B Testing to help suggest areas of improvement and track the performance of SEO changes
  • Meeting with existing customers, offering technical guidance to allow them to focus their ideas for the growth of their websites
  • Providing support to my fellow developers and working with them to refine our work flow and harness useful new ideas to push our sites forward

Hollywood Bowl Leicester - July 2000 to Sept 2004
Various Positions rising to Bar Team Leader

  • Working under pressure
  • Dealing with customers
  • Training and organising staff members
  • Responsible for placing stock orders, writing bar shift rotas and other specialised tasks

Education

Sheffield Hallam University - Sept 2004 to December 2005
MSc Multimedia and the Internet

This course covered a variety of areas including: JSP, ASP, database design, Flash, UML, e-learning, e-commerce

Dissertation: A Mobile Rich Media Framework for Incident Information Capture - designing and creating a multi-device system using PHP and MySQL. The system would allow paramedics to use smartphones to provide photographs and information about a patient at the accident scene, giving doctors at the hospital additional time to prepare for their arrival. It also used the Internet-enabled television system available at that time to provide access to the system on home visits.

University of Warwick - Sept 2000 to July 2003
BSc (Hons) Computer Science – 2:2
This course provided covered a wide range of areas of computing including Java, databases, software development, Human Computer Interaction. Third Year Project was designing and building a JSP powered website with support for multiple levels of user permissions.

Dixie Grammar School - Sept 1992 to July 2000
A-Levels in Maths, Physics and Chemistry (Grade A), 10 GCSEs (Grade A*-B)

Personal

Nationality: British
Interests: Guitars, geckos and homebrewing