I invite you to view a small selection of sites I have worked on within the past 6 months.
This is by no means a complete list of skills, clients nor sites. I refer you to my CV for further details.
Welcome
I graduated from University Of Manchester in 2007 and hold a degree in BSc (Hons) Computer Science.
I enjoy many aspects of IT, from PC repairs to programming. I have a genuine enthusiasm to learn about new technologies and to work as a team to solve problems.
I own my own vehicle and live within a 15 minute drive of Manchester city center.
My Skill set includes:
- HTML/XHTML
- CSS
- PHP 4/5
- XSL
- XML
- MySQL
- PL/SQL
- JavaScript / jQuery
- FBML/FBJS (Facebook Apps)
- Screen Scraping (Screen-Scraper, Interpreted Java, ASP.NET C#, MS SQL)
- Textpattern CMS
- Windows/Ubuntu
- Hardware (repairs and installation)
- EPOS & CCTV installation, networking
Sports Tours International
My latest project has involved the redesign of Sports Tours International (STI) website. STI offers information and event booking for sporting activities; cycling, running, triathlons and golf.
The new design went live May 2011. And moves the website from a dated 90's narrow newspaper column style layout to a much more vibrantly colored one, and one that also wider and more fluid.
A criticism of the previous site was poor cross browser support, especially on mobile devices. The new site has been coded to valid HTML 5 and W3C standards, and has been extensively tested in all major desktop browsers (legacy IE 5.5/6.0, IE7, IE8, IE9, FF4, latest versions of Chrome, Safari, Opera) and mobile device browsers (iPad, iPhone 3G, iPhone 4).
The backend is powered by Textpattern CMS, and features popular plugins and also some custom bespoke modifications.
Sunquest Facebook App (Thomas Cook Canada)
Sunquest is a Canadian brand of Thomas Cook. As with many companies they have recognised the importance of social media and advertising.
Work was commissioned on a Facebook Application in the mid-2010, with the Application finally going live at the start of 2011.
The App displays holiday packages taken from Sunquest's inventory, Facebook users search by price or destination. Users can then create their own holiday by uploading images and descriptions, and inviting their friends to come.
The driving principle is the more friends invited to party, the bigger the discount the users receive.
Users can also cast votes on their favourite holidays, the number of votes are shown as progress bars with discount milestones.
The App is then spread virally through News Feeds, Wall posts and "Like" buttons.
I developed this Application using Facebook Markup Language (FBML), FBJS (Facebook JavaScript) and with the latest version of Facebook PHP SDK API. User details, holiday inventiory and votes are stored in MySQL DB.
In addition to the front end App, I developed a CMS solution which allows Sunquest staff to load inventory via XML WebServices, to edit holiday pricing and to track the progress of users votes.
Hoseasons Competitor Pricing System
In addition website building, I am also skilled in Screen Scraping. As part of Competitor Analysis projects I have built many Scraping modules for The Hoseasons Group, a specialist in holiday cottage rentals.
Screen scraping can be used to simulate mouse clicks and form submits and then extracts pricing data from the HTML/js/XML.
For Competitor Websites a screen scraper session is invoked from a C# terminal application. Console apps can be setup as scheduled tasks to run at set intervals.
Scraped data is stored in MS SQL database tables. Parameters such as departure date and duration of nights can be set using a front end asp.net web application.
On completion of a scrape an email log is sent, Competitor data can then be queried and compared.
Thomson Al Fresco
Thomson Al Fresco is a holiday search and booking site, and runs as part of the TUI group.
The site is powered by Anite CMS, a highly bespoke CMS system which is used throughout the travel industry. It shares some similarities with XSL templating.
I'm currently in the process of reskinning and adding social media to the site, such as embedded YouTube holiday clips. Future development roadmaps include a Facebook App.
Red Sea Holidays
Red Sea Holidays specialises in hotels and cruises in Egypt. It is another example of a travel website powered by Anite CMS. The site has recently under gone a complete reskin, which I played a major part in.
One of the perks of working on this project has been discounted trips to Egypt!
Your Local Post Office
Your Local Post Office is a run by the Federation of Sub-Postmasters. It is a place for the thousands of small local postoffices to create web presence for themselves, to uploaded branch details, local events, classified ads and create a 'shopping' area.
The site is based on Joomla CMS with bespoke PHP components. jQuery and Yahoo YUI handle a majority of the Javascript. I am the lead the developer on this on going project.
AA Appointments
AA Appointments is the largest international specialist travel recruitment agencies. The site is written in ASP classic and supports the uploading of CV's and email notifications to subscribed users.
My main role on this project was debugging, data collection, site reskin and upgrading CMS patches. In addition to integrating the ASP backend with Barclays ePDQ payment gateway.
ClickPostcard
A site which allows users to create their own perfect personalised postcards and ordering them to print, by uploading their own pictures and messages.
The site has a heavily Flashed based component, and it has been my role to integrate this with our PHP backend. Billing information is then sent onto payment gateways, including PayPal and Google Cart.
Premier League Tickets -FWM
In 2009 whilst at FWM, I had the opportunity to work with the Premier League on their mini ticketing and fixture iframe site.
The two primary areas of the site I worked on are the backend CMS admin and emailing system.
A email is sent to all PL users weekly. I coded the email to be cross client compatible (Outlook 2000-2007, Hotmail, Gmail and Yahoo mail). It is also viewable via a normal browser. The email pulls in data from the CMS and also third party XML feeds.
Later the iframe was also embedded on other sporting sites.
Barclays fan of India -FWM
A competition site giving lucky winners the chance to be flown over from India to watch their favorite team. I worked on this project entirely on my own and I coded all aspects of xHTML/CSS/JS/PHP/XSL/XML, whilst at FWM.
The competition has since ended, but may I draw your attention to the gallery section, in particular the picture and video subsections.
Users were able to upload images and videos as a part of their entry.
Images were automatically resized and cropped.
Users could upload a number of video formats (wmv, avi, 3gp, mov) , these were automatically transcoded to flv for embedding.
I created a password protected approval system for the client so only appropriate entries were displayed.
The site's round box design was achieved using a series of transparent PNG images and div boxes with borders. The boxes can be made to grow to accommodate larger content and still display correctly in IE6. The grass background will 'grow' to match any screen resolution.
Clubcoors -FWM
A site exclusively for retailers of the Coors product range.
I designed a PHP calendar and events section to help retailers prepare stocks for festival and holiday periods.
I created an admin so that users with no technical knowledge could add and maintain their own events.
Carling -FWM
I have worked in a team of seven developers continuously on Carling since starting at FWM, working on numerous aspects of the site including competitions, emails and social networking features. My daily activities also include maintaining text and image content, bug fixing, page redirects as part of SEO, extraction and export of competition winners from databases to CSV.
I created a page for British Barley Farmers, a long string of British Barley promotions and adverts, which you may have seen some of the adverts on ITV Movies.
Nationwide Football -FWM
Was also known by the names of Home Nations or Sponsored By You. A site with selected UK team news stories, pictures and videos.
I created the 2009 splash page. XML news stories are listed beside external Twitter and Youtube RSS feeds. The RSS are cached on demand on local servers to reduce overhead loading times. Youtube channel is cached for up to 60 minutes, whilst the Twitter tweets cache is refreshed once every 30 minutes. In the left corner is a simple Javascript countdown clock counting down to the 2010 world cup.
4thegame -FWM
4thegame was a long-standing football fanatic's site which ran from the early 90's up until the end of 2009. Fans could read up on the latest news, gossip, make comments on matches and view pictures videos about football.
For historical reasons much of the code is table based. I was involved in re-skinning the site to give it a new look for the new football season.
The 'Today In Football' section was a rotating Javascript carousel of images which link through to internal and external news stories. The carousel rotated every 10 seconds automatically, but could be interrupted by placing the cursor over a news image. A CMS was also created to allow non-technical journalists to keep the carousel and stories updated.
My weekly activities on 4thegame included general bug fixing, embedding Javascript and Flash adverts, adding Google analytics and other tracking code.
A couple football seasons ago I created a Firefox Toolbar using RDF and Ajax.
Though not part of my technical role I have had my 15 minutes of fame posing as a model for a mobile phone advert on the site.
George Digweed -FWM
The official website of the multi-world and European clay pigeon shooting champion George Digweed.
This is the place to find all the latest information on George's career and ever-expanding trophy cabinet.
Complete with Twitter and youtube feeds, as well as a Facebook Fanbox.
I was the sole developer on this project.
The site template is flexible and could be duplicated and sold to other sporting heroes in the future.
Buffet Metro
Website promoting Buffet Metro, Manchester's All You Can Eat Chinese Buffet.
Located in the heart of City centre, Piccadilly Gardens, fully air conditioned and open 7 days a week.
Complete with galleries and image player.
I am the sole developer on this project, in addition to website maintenance I also provide EPOS, CCTV and in restaurant music solutions to Buffet Metro.
Ming Dynasty
Website promoting Ming Dynasty, a local Chinese Takeaway.
An example of a completely flat bespoke HTML site.
I am the sole developer on this project, in addition to website maintenance I also provide technial support to Ming Dynasty's computers.