The early days

I have been developing websites now since 1999 and have worked on many different types of website over the years. After learning the basics of HTML and working through all the Macromedia tutorials and developing some test projects I knew this was the right career for me.

I started out working with my Cousin and Uncle back in 2000 for a small web company in Warrington that my Uncle had created. We mainly worked on static websites for our clients.

We soon got involved in larger projects and e-commerce using Actinic Catalog and modifying all the templates etc which was a big challenge as everything was set in tables for layout. ARRRGHH!

I got to use all the Macromedia software mainly Dreamweaver, Fireworks and Flash. These tools were enough to tackle most of the projects so I developed a good understanding on how they worked and became quite productive.

The Silkmoth era

The next phase of my career as a web developer saw me take up a role in Macclesfield for a multimedia company called Silkmoth. Here I got to develop my all round skills and start to learn classic ASP for some projects that required a database to store information. I also got to know my way around Adobe Photoshop and used it to create graphics and modify images for the websites. The projects came thick and fast and I became involved in some very large scale developments like the Bensons for Beds website using different skills like Flash, ASP and some nifty DHTML and JavaScript.

As time went by, the trend changed with clients wanting more than just a static website. Clients wanted database driven websites to store product / customer information or they wanted to be able to modify the content of their website easily themselves without knowledge of HTML. This pushed me more down the programming route as the bulk of the work was at the back end rather than the front end. The change in trend made me focus more on developing my ASP skills programming in VBScript and then later JavaScript using a more object oriented approach for re-useability and maintainability.

I became lead web developer at Silkmoth and continued to expand my knowledge and skill at developing a wide range of websites using all my skills of front end design and development and programming using ASP and JavaScript. For databases we used Access at first but soon we realised the limitations and security vulnerabilities of Access and started to work with Microsoft SQL Server 2000 as standard. At the start of 2003 the bottom seemed to fall out of web dev and Silkmoth decided to downsize due to reduced workload and a couple of us were made redundant.

The Eazyfone era

I had a spell out of full time web develoment due to the lack of jobs at the time and did a number of other jobs like DJing among other things. I still kept my hand in web dev by doing a bit of freelance for friends who were promoters of dance events. In 2004 I took a job in Macclesfield for a phone recycling company called Eazyfone Ltd. I became their in house web developer to work on all their web site projects.

During my time at Eazyfone, I developed from scratch the envirofone.com web site which is an online mobile phone trading platform where people can exchange their old mobile for cash or argos credit. This was to be my proudest achievement to date so far. Within 18 months of launch the website had 100,000 registered users and this contributed to the company quadrupling in size and outgrowing it's premises. The front end of the site was only a small part of the overall system. I created a complex back end admin system which allowed our staff to process the phones, deal with customer service enquiries and process payments for the customers.

I also developed a statistics and reporting panel which helped us to understand the market and improve our performance. I was made Web Development Manager and had to bring in extra resource to help with the development of the system.

The system that I developed was coded in classic ASP with an SQL Server database behind it. After a while I decided to upgrade the website and change the coding from classic ASP to ASP.NET due to performance issues. This made me learn ASP.NET and recruit a team of .NET developers to help overhaul the system. We redeveloped the entire system in ASP.NET and this proved to be a huge success.

Freelance web developer

The decision of wanting to become a freelance developer came about for 2 major reasons. I needed to address some burning desires inside me which were

• To be a bigger part of my childrens lives who I'd lived away from for a number of years and was feeling a big pinch in my soul.
• I wanted to better myself as a web developer rather than a manager because I got more satisfaction by producing top drawer solutions and using my imagination to it's potential on a daily basis than man managing and project planning.

These acknowledgements shifted my focus drastically resulting in me relocating whole heartedly back to my home town of Haydock. Since then I have been working on a wide variety of web solutions and have enjoyed the journey of expanding my knowledge, experience and skillset raising me to the very confident position I find myself in now.

Recently I have been working for a number of top agencies around the Manchester area on some high profile clients. Due to the non-disclosure agreements I have signed I can't go into detail about my recent work but all I can say is that every day I enjoy the challenge of bettering myself and overcoming every obstacle in my way in the knowledge that nothing is beyond me. In the last 2 years alone my knowledge and understanding of web technologies has accelerated rapidly and I thrive on the bleeding edge of technology - pushing the boundaries of whet we can achieve.

I have added to armoury over the last 2 years picking up PHP 5, AJAX, ASP.NET 3.5, MySQL, jQuery, SubSonic and Web Services. In my latest work I have found the most enjoyment at tackling a wider array of tasks and taking on challenges with a CAN-DO attitude. This type of development is really exciting and has opened the door to a host of new opportunities. No longer do we need to rely on websites that go from page to page. I think we will see a change in the next few years on how websites will be made.

Watch this space...