Website Design

I have always been interested in computers. Even before the initial crude commercial systems were available to the general public in the mid-1970s, I remember avidly following the various build-it-yourself designs that appeared in UK electronics magazines such as Practical Electronics, Electronics Today International and Elektor. I even remember Practical Wireless magazine drifting away from its radio roots around this time to dabble in arcane matters. (For more about these magazines and dedicated computer magazines such as Personal Computer World see the Early UK Computer Magazines page.)

In the 1980s, after a small stint writing programs for the Commodore 64 and BBC B Micros, I became involved in programming Burroughs/Unisys B2x series computers initially using Pascal and then C under their CTOS operating system. Later, some of the programs were ported to the PCs of the time running under MS-DOS (Windows was still at version 2 back then and no-one was really developing for it). In the 1990s I did an Applied Computing degree at the University of Easy Access East Anglia attaining a first class BSc. degree. In the latter part of the 90s I worked at the local Training and Enterprise Council in their IT department and started developing their intranet using the rather crude tools available at the time under Windows NT.

In 1999 I took a post with my first dedicated web-based employer, AngliaCampus, as their Senior Programmer. AngliaCampus was part of the Anglia TV group of companies along with its sister company, Anglia Multimedia. Initially I wrote many of their Java applets used for interactive activities on the site.

In 2000/1 Granada took over the Anglia companies. This resulted in the eventual closure of AngliaCampus as a going concern in Norwich (and Granada did a hatchet job on much of the TV company here as well). As Campus ground to a halt I worked on the original incarnation of the GLPD (Granada Learning Professional Development) web site where I developed the back-end administration system using PHP and MySQL running on an Apache web server - a system now more commonly known as LAMP.

In 2002/3 I used what I had learned to start developing a set of predominately OO-based PHP library routines to make interactive web site building a far easier task. The library has been under constant development since then and, in 2009, had a whole raft of JavaScript functionality added to the PHP core. It is now used as the basis for all the websites I have since created. For more information about the library and its contents see DLib Library for general info and DLib Library API for the individual function calls.

In 2008 I started developing another framework on top of DLib called DLibModules. This is a set of interchangeable/pluggable modules that can handle aspects such as: Adverts, Blogs, Calendars, Company details, Documents, Events, FAQs, Galleries (several styles), Google Maps, Links, Link Directories, Meetings and Attendees, Menus, News, Pages, System Settings, Users and User defined forms. Each of the modules is configurable (via a web based configuration program) so that they can be adapted to whatever is required for any particular site. Most of the sites I have built since then have used this new framework.

Since 2005 I have been self-employed and have produced sites both directly and for other companies. The sites I have designed over the past few years include:

• Company sites such as B T Ross and Ivy Farm
• E-Commerce sites such as Summer Garden Buildings and Poppyland
• Other general sites such as Norfolk Knitters and Stookey Blue.
• Sites that use 'Mash Ups' such as Cromer Carnival, This is Cromer and, again, Poppyland.

If you would like a quote to build a web site then please contact me.

For more details on the technologies implemented on some of the web sites mentioned above then please see the next page: Web Technologies.