Walking With Dinosaurs

This was the second responsive site I have worked on.  While the likes of the folding grid were handled by the front end developer I was still required to come up with innovative ways to serve content to both desktop and mobile devices.  In addition it was also a challenge to make the content of the website fully content manageable with WordPress.

I succeeded in making all the websites content editable via the CMS and used PHP scripts to detect which device the website was being served too, serving different content to each device.

A nice feature added to this site was the ability to share images in the gallery, served and managed from the likes of flickr and youtube, across social networks and have them open in a light box when the shared link was followed.  Also I enjoyed creating the ability to animate areas of the page when the video reached a particular time, something manageable from the CMS.

Billy Elliot

I was responsible for the technical specification and build of this website, working almost alone throughout.  After presenting my proposed solution to the client I started the build of a website that would function as three: The UK, Broadway and US tour sites.

The build required a varying level of user groups with numerous configurations of permissions so the site was built in Joomla thanks to its flexible user management and its customizable ACL (Access Control Level) features.  This meant that each component and its data could be configured to be accessed and edited by only the specified user groups.

The site was built on a very tight turnaround due to constraints regarding the lifespan of the existing US site, which has to go offline due to disagreements with the former service provider.

The site was a challenge to create and required a range of skills to complete.  AJAX, JavaScript, HTML5 and CSS3 made for an easy to use front end, and improving my knowledge of front end development.  The PHP backend was also challenging and required the installation of technologies on the server to improve caching performance.

Shrek the Musical

This is the site that I have most frequently worked on during my time at aka.  It has received high traffic due to appearance on the likes of Britain’s Got Talent, resulting in us having to optimize the site numerous times, upscale the server and very aggressively cache the sites content.

While the site has very little in the way of impressive features, it has stretched and improved my skills due to the requirements of the client.  The site is built in WordPress and I have had to create a number of bespoke plugins and custom post types to allow for every aspect of the site to be manageable.  Innovative page templates have been created in order to allow for content managers to easily add attractive pages to the site, rather than in the past where it has been the responsibility of the development team to design, create and update multiple static designs for pages.

I have also been responsible for training the client on the CMS and have as a result work closely with them to improve the way in which it works in order to better suit their needs.

aka Promotions

This was the first responsive website I had worked on so was quite excited at he opportunity.  For those whom do not know, responsive websites are a means of serving predominantly the same content at the optimal resolution for the device it is being used on, changing the theme and aspects of the content according to the device.

There were very simple issues, such as rendering light box content (such as iframes) at a usable size on all devices, resulting in the creation of a script that sets the max width of such content depending on the size of the screen.  Also I had to detect the device being used by the end user while server side with PHP, and deliver content based on this information, for example, stopping the addition of a flash video playing on mobile devices.

I also added functionality such as an infinite scroller, a gallery plugin that could be easily added to content via a short code in both posts and widgets, a front page carousel which uses differing images to the featured image in posts.  I also created a number of other custom post types and plugins.

This website was again highly optimized and cached, but less due to the traffic and more due to the devices its content was to be delivered to.

Matilda the Musical

This site was quite a simple build, that had to allow for the content management of every aspect of the site.  The most challenging aspects of the build were getting things such as the breadcrumb to work effectively, getting varying page and category classes to be output to allow for an attractive design and the creation of a gallery plugin.

The plugin allows for multimedia content to be feed from Flickr and Youtube as well as WordPress and integrated into the same gallery.  Also the ability to share each gallery item was requested.  The plugin uses a scheduled task to regularly check these third parties for updates to galleries, playlists and photo sets updating the cache if new media is available and publishing it to the website.  This allows for easier management of the social campaign as well as website content.

Again, this website gets relatively high traffic so the site had to be heavily optimized and aggressively cached in order to achieve a consistent and acceptable page load weight and time.

LoFi

This website was for a graphic designer whom I worked with.  It was to advertise his work and a blog to act as a creative outlet.  This led to the creation of a simple theme and a number of bespoke plugins, allowing for every aspect of the site to be content managed.

This site has been optimized numerous times in order to improve performance but is currently being served from a sub par, shared hosting environment and is performing badly.  I would love to see the site on a better server as it would improve its page ranking and make for better user experience.

NHS Hampshire

The NHS Hampshire website was live by the time that I arrived at NHS Hampshire Digital.  However, during my time at NHS Hampshire I had been responsible for a number of new enhancements to the site, not to mention ongoing maintenance.  The most notable component I added to the site was the newsletter manager.  It allowed for automated emails to be sent out to users in particular email lists, grabbing content from articles that existed in the database that were associated with a list of interests users defined when they signed up.

I also moved this site to a vanilla install, migrating code, documents, images and migrating data from the database, based on a thorough migration plan and freeing the team from a restrictive edited Joomla core.  This resulted in the creation of a number of components modules and plugins so that they no longer depended on core changes to the Joomla infrastructure.

NHS HCHC

The NHS HCHC website was also live prior to my arrival at NHS Hampshire Digital.  However, I was still responsible for the upkeep of the site, keeping up to date with tracker items, as with all the sites, and developing a number of enhancements.  Enhancements included the creation of a Services manager, which allowed for the public to search the services and sub-services provided by HCHC via AJAX, as well as having a backend that allowed for the management of services.

I again moved this site to a vanilla install, migrating code, documents, images and migrating data from the database based on a thorough migration plan, much like with the NHS Hampshire website.

NHS Hampshire Primary Care

The Primary Care site is an extranet, used to keep contractors abreast of news and providing them with access to a number of useful documents, electronic forms and useful links.  The site was split into Primary Care news, GPs, Dentists, Pharmacists, Optometrists and PBC’s and featured a jQuery accordion that utilized PHP and MySQL to drag in specified articles, updatable via the backend, and another javascript based slider that grabbed articles specified for use on the front page.

I created a number of modules for use throughout the site, as well as training up a number of staff on how to administer the site and aid them in the creation of documentation regarding such issues.

NHS SCSCG

SCSCG’s site was a fairly basic brochure site.  The intention was to inform users of latest news and proposed actions, as well as informing the public what the South Central Specialised Commissioning Group actually do.  For this website, I spent a good deal of time training up staff, and creating one or two modules to enhance the site.  I was also responsible for the site being moved to a vanilla install, rather than it sitting on an edited code base.  This meant both a code and database migration, a challenge I relished and enjoyed.