Portfolio

I’m a rare breed:

• I’m a developer who has also worked as a tester.
• I’m skilled both in back-end and front-end web development.
• I’m technical, but I speak in plain English.

My IT career has included web development, software testing, technical support, intranet development, and process improvement. I’m also an ISEB-qualified tester.

I’ve worked for large, small and medium-sized companies, working in teams and alone, and I’ve worked from home and in offices.

I don’t believe in technology for technology’s sake. I’m keen on creating things that people find easy to use. I don’t expect non-technical people to go in and edit config files or go into the database – instead, I build administration tools that are just as easy to use as the rest of the site. Basically, I build sites I would want to use myself.

Notable Projects

printed.com

I’m the Technical Architect for printed.com, the online digital print shop for business cards, posters, leaflets and much more. I built the back-end code for the entire site, taking the business requirements, graphic designs, and wireframes, assembling them into a fully functional website.

Key features include:

• a wide range of products – business cards, leaflets and flyers, stationery, posters, and seasonal products such as calendars and Christmas cards;
• an intuitive ordering process – it’s really easy to get a quote and place your order;
• fully customisable product management – new products can be set up with minimal developer effort – in some cases, no technical resource is needed;
• integration with City Link software for dispatching orders;
• live stats – staff can quickly see a snapshot of the latest orders and statistic, updated in realtime as new orders come in;
• comprehensive reporting tools and financial information.

Visit site: printed.com

 

Floor15

A personal project that I’m building when I have a bit of spare time. It hasn’t progressed very far as yet, but already has some useful tools:

• Members can sign up for free and add their blogs;
• Selected volunteers help out by assessing new blogs and saying whether they think the blogs should be allowed in. This removes most of the admin effort in approving and rejecting blogs;
• Once blogs are approved and the owner uploads an image, they are promoted across the site;
• Forums allow members to interact, exchange ideas and help each other out;
• Down the road, the points system will open up many possibilities for reviewing other people’s blogs and helping the whole community to improve their blogs.

King Street Computers

Initially a fairly simple website, this quickly grew into a large, ongoing project. Key features include:

• full content management functionality;
• downloads section for registered customers to get the latest King Street Computers software;
• integrated customer database, with contact details and call history (manual notes added by staff);
• online invoicing – invoices can be created for any customer and emailed to them for payment;
• quotes – similar to invoices, except that if a quote is accepted it automatically becomes an invoice;
• customer control panel so customers can accept quotes and view their invoices online;
• export to Windows Accounting software to avoid duplication of effort – for this feature I also built an accompanying Windows application to update the Accounting database;
• dynamically generated PDFs of all quotes and invoices, giving a polished and professional look to the documentation;
• quarterly support invoices – a staff member can trigger these at the click of a button, and email every customer with their invoice without having to generate and email them individually.

Visit site: King Street Computers (note: most functionality is not public)

Archived Projects

CMF Ads

A low cost, high value ad network. Launched in January 2009, the site has grown to become one of the “top three” ad networks for bloggers, alongside Entrecard and Adgitize. The site has developed from a basic ad network to a fully-blown community site for bloggers and advertisers. Key features include:

• JavaScript widget that displays between 1 and 6 graphical ads, sized at 125×125 pixels;
• Simple PayPal purchasing to allow members to add funds to their account;
• Passive income – members earn funds from the pageviews an ad accumulates while on their blog;
• Funds can be cashed out at a low cashout tax of 10%, or reinvested for further advertising;
• Community tools: fully integrated chat room and forums;
• Comprehensive staff tools for managing new blog applications, member funds, and reviewing statistics.

The site closed in October 2011.