Hello and welcome to you all. This is a “brand new for 2010″ blog written by a 20 year old web developer based on the Herefordshire/Worcestershire border in the United Kingdom. Over the coming months I will hopefully find the time to cover a large range of topics in the web development field. My posts could range from tiny but very helpful little SQL snippets that I use from day-to-day in both my job at Hughes Media Internet Ltd and when freelancing, to slightly more “theory-based” articles regarding the best approaches to take to solve common problems.
But before I get in to all of that, let me just cover a little bit about me. I started “writing web sites” in 2003, when I owned and managed my own Championship Manager and Football Manager fan site, called “Assistant Manager”. At 14 years old, I wasn’t financially equipped to pay anyone to work on the site, so I learnt HTML, CSS and Javascript to create my own static pages. As the site grew, I saw the need to have a content management system, and eventually ended up learning PHP and MySQL to build my own basic content management system.
As time went on it became clear that the web was something I enjoyed working with, and in 2006 I started to take the work a little more seriously. I read and researched web standards and best practices – primarily those “written by” or mentioned by the w3c. I started to do small projects as PHP freelancer, and through word of mouth managed to build a sizeable “freelance” client base.
After studying Maths, Physics, ICT and English Language at Hereford Sixth Form College, I was presented with a fantastic job opportunity with Right Dynamic – a small but rapidly expanding company based in the beautiful county of Shropshire (and later Herefordshire). During my time at Right Dynamic, I was responsible for converting designs to HTML and CSS layouts, and also for developing the Content Management Systems on which the web sites we built were based. It was during this time that I realised that I enjoyed the challenges and rewarding aspects of creating bespoke software using PHP, and in March 2008 I decided to specialise slightly, and accepted a more development-focused role at Hughes Media Internet Ltd.
This pretty much takes us to where I am today. Over the last 2 years at Hughes Media I have developed my knowledge of working on the “Linux command line” as well as learning to use version control systems such as subversion or cvs. In addition to gaining vital “real life” commercial experience whilst working in a large range of industries, I have also benefitted from working in a team of highly experienced and knowledgeable individuals, whose specialities include Project Management, UI and Graphic Design, and Search Engine Optimisation and Marketing.
I hope that you enjoy reading this blog in the future – and most importantly of all I would like to take this opportunity to welcome all feedback – positive or negative – to anything I might discuss on this blog.
