Scribe CMS v4

Experimental Content Management System

One learning exercise I swear by is, if you want to learn a new language or framework, practice by writing a content management system. A CMS, by its nature, requires everything that a CRUD system does, you have to be able to Create, Read, Update and Delete data so in this case, in order to learn Remix.Run (and later, React-Router v7 framework) I started from scratch and re-wrote Scribe CMS and utilised it as the Content store for the PerpetualSummer.ltd website.

Perpetual Summer Ltd.

Software Development Consultancy Services Website

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UOB Sustainability Project

Zero-Carbon Business Questionnaire Microsite

My second project at Aleph-Labs was working with the design team to create a questionnaire micro-site that enables UOB to collect information from their business banking clients and make recommendations as to how they can best adapt their organisation to a zero-carbon future.

The user journey consists of an introduction page that gives a brief overview of what they can expect from completing the 5-minute questionnaire. When the user clicks the 'Take the Quiz' button they are automatically scrolled down to the first question.

After choosing which sector of business the user is in on the first question, all but one of the subsequent questions are simple 'Yes' or 'No' answers. As the user progresses each answer is used to compute a score and determine which of a series of advisory PDFs they will receive at the end of the process.

The scrolling is controlled by the application. When an answer is given the user is automatically scrolled to the next question. The user can scroll back using the Previous button on desktop or using a swipe gesture on mobile or tablet.

If the user gets to the end of the form without answering all questions they are presented with a link that scrolls them back up to the unanswered question. If the user has successfully completed all questions then they are given a link to the next page which will present the user with the appropriate PDF with advice and guidance on how to best prepare their business to adapt to and provide for a green future.

Standard Chartered Bank

Ember to React Migration Project

My first project at Aleph-Labs was working with their long-time client, Standard Chartered Bank. Aleph had been tasked with updating SCB's online presence to move their existing online banking app away from using Ember to operating solely in React.js.

Migrating to a component-driven model using Module Federation microservices we built the UI in React using Redux for state management. The process involved reverse-engineering the Ember application and splitting the existing application into logical composable modules to be developed in React.

UOB Infinity

Retail and Business Banking Portal

In January 2020 I moved to Singapore. I started working at UOB as a Senior Developer Front End in July 2020 working on their online banking portal, UOB Infinity. The scope of this role was to develop the Hong Kong variant of their core banking application.

This involved identifying, planning and implementing the changes required to modify the base application, which was designed for the Singapore market and adapt it to accommodate the differences in the Hong Kong market. This includes changes required to currency, forex, transaction types and banking facilities that are unique or specific to the Hong Kong banking sector.

Due to the breadth of changes required across all areas of the application, I gained a great deal of experience as we were not focused on one specific area of the app. I also took responsibility for adapting and expanding their core UI component set to facilitate the additional features that were required to accommodate the Hong Kong variant.

Having previously had no experience in the banking sector prior to joining UOB, I found the work rewarding and enjoyed the challenge of learning to understand the obstacles unique to the banking and finance sector and how we can develop software and user interface solutions to help overcome them.

Booking.com

RyanAir Car Hire Integration Project

Operating for my contracting company, Perpetual Summer Ltd, I was contracted to work for Booking.com in a development consultancy capacity. I provided support and development for numerous teams within their Manchester offices working towards the goal of creating their car-hire platform integration with one of their aviation and tourism clients, RyanAir. They required help to meet a deadline in which my role was to help develop and integrate a search facility as part of RyanAir's user journey.

Booking.com provides RyanAir's Car Hire stage of the user experience. My role was to support and aid the development of the UI that facilitates the search and selection of hire cars and help integrate that into the API provided by RyanAir.

This project was the first time I had worked utilising Mob Programming methodology which I found to be an excellent way of working, the code quality was outstanding as a result of having many people suggesting alternative approaches to solving problems which contributed to the final product being of an extremely high standard.

The search and sort facility we produced was comprised of a series of composable and reusable modular components, including a 'snake' calendar and search facility all written in Typescript and React. We succeeded in delivering the project on time despite the deadline being considered by some to be difficult-to-impossible, both booking.com and RyanAir were delighted with this achievement.

AE Live

AE Graphics Live Video Title Overlay Control Application

My second client operating as Perpetual Summer Ltd was AE Live (formerly AE Graphics) a company based near London that provides video overlay title services to prestigious international sports broadcasters such as Sky TV and BBC.

I was tasked with developing a browser-based video overlay interface comprised of a client application to enable the user to control the information shown and an overlay application utilising CasparCG to overlay information graphics over live video for a variety of sports including international cricket, tour de France and a number of professional league football associations worldwide.

I was given full responsibility for this project and worked alone as an individual contributor. I had autonomy on the stack we used, I chose to use React for the overlay visual output due to its speed and responsiveness which was essential due to the nature of the product requirements.

I chose React with Redux as the state engine due to the wealth of resources available, at the time it was the go-to state container for React development. Both the client and overlay visuals were designed by myself and animated using SCSS (no external libraries to keep bundle size to a minimum) which I used to produce instantaneous transitions and visual flourishes.

I was responsible for reporting progress back to the project management team and board where I presented regular updates to keep them updated with progress and get regular feedback and direction on project goals. This was extremely interesting and challenging work only tangentially linked to work I had done before, I enjoyed the challenge and was extremely proud of the product that was delivered.

Degree 53 & Betfred

Regulatory Compliance & Maintenance

I founded Perpetual Summer Ltd and started working as a contractor in the spring of 2018 and was immediately hired by degree53 to work on the Betfred.mobi online gambling portal.

My duties mainly involved small works, back-end integration, updates to existing functionality, fixes for validation on registration and some design change implementation on their games offerings.

Although this role was only short-term, to fill a requirements shortfall with compliance deadlines looming, I enjoyed the work and my previous experience in this sector enabled me to quickly integrate and get productive.

SIS: Greyhound Racing

Dynamic Video Title Overlay Service

Customers of SIS Bettings various subscription-based sports betting streaming services have a variety of opt-in package options. Due to the variance between subscriptions caused by the numerous customisations possible, we were challenged to develop an application to run during the break between live-race video streams of greyhound races in order to prevent 'dead air'.

We endeavoured to produce something that displayed the results of previous races and the racecard for the next race. It needed to only display relevant data for the services and locations available to that specific subscriber - a high degree of customisation SIS was not previously able to offer.

Throughout the day this product fills the time between live-streamed events, it shows the previous 3 results and the next 3 racecards and changes in realtime to only show events that relate to the services paid for by the subscriber. No superfluous result or racecard data will be displayed for any events that occur, that were not requested as part of their service subscription. This degree of bespoke channel tailoring has not been done before outside of in-house channels run by operators.

SIS: RunnerDB

Horse and Greyhound Races: Runners and Results Database

RunnerDB is a system that captures data from horse and greyhound races including results, runners, racetracks, jockeys and owners. It also features a front-end interface for an experimental live geo-tracking system that was prototyped and developed by SIS for instant live positional monitoring of Runners (both horses and greyhounds) during races.

Using Google Maps we overlayed geopositional data to track runners and feed that information into the dynamic racecards system for live race progress data. At the time this was developed no other racing data services company in the world offered this pioneering feature, it's something our dev team was particularly proud of.

SIS: Streaming Access Control

Client Subscription Management Control Panel

Streaming Access Control was designed to allow customers of SIS' video-over-fiber services to customise the feeds provided.

This app was conceived to allow deep customisation of streams provided by SIS, including both scheduling and branded titles & wipes.

SIS: Dynamic Racecards

Multi-purpose Racecard Client and API

Dynamic Racecards was a project designed to provide a drop-in application to be used in any situation to display the day's racing information. With the ability to filter between horse and greyhound events, by nation or region, or by individual track. This was utilised in a huge variety of places from internal applications to video overlays which can be seen on horseracing events broadcast from around the world.

Prior to each race the Dynamic Racecards app displays up to the second price updates, withdrawals, jockey changes and more. During the race, when used in conjunction with the in-running software we developed, this application displays live visual updates to display the running order in the live event being viewed. Results and other information are then displayed after the event. This ran in realtime 24 hours a day and consumed data provided from around the world and was a long-running project that was regularly updated throughout my time at SIS.

SIS: Football Services

Live in-play updates on international football matches

Football Services is the central portal for SIS' global client base of sports gambling clients, its purpose is to provide customers of SIS' sports betting data services the tools to best utilise the data available to them to provide betting opportunities to their customers.

Football Services also enabled realtime data collection from matches via the Football Trader App, utilised by SIS staff attending the games who captured events in realtime using our android tablet based data collection tool.

TDC Bitworks.co.uk

Personal Blogging Site

TDCbitworks.co.uk was my first attempt at a personal Blogging site, I developed it in order to give myself a platform with which to write articles, publish them online and draw attention to them using the social media channels of the time such as Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus, Pinterest and others.

In order to best facilitate this I decided to integrate it into a bespoke Content management system. It would have been easier to incorporate this into an existing platform such as WordPress or even Blogger however I wanted to see if I could develop something similar myself and really challenge my PHP and MySQL programming skills.

As this is was blog site, I wanted the copy to be the dominant feature and not overwhelm the site with superfluous features and non-relevant information. With the ability to share articles via social media, my goal was to update this regularly and get a respectable author rank in order to better advertise my talents as a developer and designer with a good background in search engine marketing.

I developed this website to use as my blogging site where I can post articles on web design, technology and any other topics that compel me to write. In order to achieve that I needed a content management system, rather than use an out-of-the-box solution like WordPress, I decided to attempt to write my own cms which I called Scribe CMS, more of which you can read about below.

Scribe CMS v1

Custom-made Content Management System

In order to create and manage articles on the TDCbitworks.co.uk site I needed a content management system. The creation of this app, which I have since named Scribe CMS, was a challenging project that I thoroughly enjoyed developing.

My skills as a developer were improved as I have had to learn a great deal more about PHP and jQuery in order to get the features and functionality required. I was imensely proud of this work and it was successfully creating this fully featured CMS that gave me the confidence in my skills to seriously pursue a career in web application development.

Microcosmic

My Former Web Design, Development and Hosting Services Website

Microcosmic was the front-of-shop services website I developed to promote the web hosting services I can provide on a freelance basis. I wanted to make it bright and vibrant yet still clear and uncluttered. The responsive layout enabled the quick addition of content without the need for additional styling to look good on mobile and tablet browsers.

This was my first company, I founded it to be able to bring all of my Design, Development and Hosting capabilities to the public under one brand. It is no longer a going concern but I learned a great deal about running an online services business which served me well later when I founded Perpetual Summer Ltd.

The Needles Park

Tourist Attraction Website

The Needles Park is a Tourist Attraction situated at Alum Bay on the Isle of Wight. With a range of attractions including a fun fair, 4D Cinema and Chairlift down to the famous sands of Alum Bay, The Needles Park required a website that illustrated the natural beauty of the area but also promoted the park facilities and entertainment as well as highlighting the rich history of the area.

Featuring a Blog, Image gallery, History section and Information on each attraction, this website proved to be a large undertaking. The fully responsive design is based on Bootstrap and also features a custom-made 'sticky' menu to enable the user to navigate the site at all times on tablets and mobile handsets.

This website was built by myself while under contract at cq2. I thoroughly enjoyed working on this project, the source material was excellent and this was reflected in the results, which the client was delighted with.

Snowdon Mountain Railway

Tourist Attraction Website

Snowdon Mountain Railway is a tourist attraction situated at the peak of Mount Snowdon in Snowdonia, Wales. It consists of a rack and pinion railway line that runs up the mountainside and stops at a visitor center at the peak of the mountain some 3’560 ft up. The railway service features both steam and diesel engines which run daily, weather permitting.

The client required a website that provides all relevant information about the attraction including train travel times, mountain weather conditions, journey prices as well as technical and historical information about the trains themselves. The site is fully responsive and comes complete with a content management system to enable the client to edit and update the site’s content, news and articles and add more pages going forward as required.

Skills Solutions

Education and Apprenticeship Services Website

Skills Solutions provides Apprenticeships and Higher Education courses for Teens and Young Adults in and around the Manchester area. We were tasked with providing a website that provides information on their range of courses and services and a course application facility.

Pension Claims Expert

Pension Services Company Website

This website was designed for the same client as Enhanced Annuities Quotes. The specification was much the same, a simple single-page website with the focus and emphasis on conversion. The site provides the basic information required but is geared towards calling the user to action in order to harvest contact information.

Enhanced Annuities Quotes

Annuities Company Website

This one-page conversion-focused website was designed with simplicity in mind. Foremost in the client's mind was to keep things as clear and simple as possible as the target audience - most likely to be elderly people - were most likely to have limited knowledge and experience with using websites.

This solution enabled us to always keep the focus on engaging the visitor, providing essential information and encouraging them to apply via a contact form which would prompt a follow-up call, which was the ultimate goal of the site. As they were pleased with the results, this client has since utilised my services with many other projects.

Tony Donelan Woodcraft

Carpentry Services Website

I was approached by a former colleague who required a website for an acquaintance. Tony Donelan Woodcraft are a company that specialises in hand-crafted garden furniture operating from their premises in Belfast, Ireland.

The design for the site had been set prior to my involvement so all that was required was to develop the site based on the PSD mockups provided, I managed to get this completed in just a few hours, this illustrates my ability to deliver projects even under tight deadlines.