I have worked with Drupal and Wordpress for over 10 years. I have built a wide variety of custom applications with sophisticated functionality and custom themes. In the last few years, I have created a few multilingual sites using the Drupal Internationalization (i18n) modules and the Wordpress WPML plugins.
Designing
- content structure for optimized usability and SEO
- complex site functionality for various types of sites using various views and forms
- versatile sites for growth and maintainability
Building
- responsive displays (theming) for desktop and mobile devices
- optimize sites for performance
- rework existing sites keeping the original branding providing enhanced functionality
- follow Drupal best practices for site
Content Management
- create sites with intuitive interfaces for content editors and site administrators
- produce useful documentation and provide training.
UpKeep / ongoing development
- maintenance of site - upgrading Drupal modules
- ongoing development - creating new functionality in existing sites
I have rescued a fair number of downed and hacked sites. It takes a lot to to affect a Drupal site, but it has been done.
tl;dr
I started doing web work in 1999 while I was in the INFOTEC program at Capilano College. The focus of the program at the time was on doing CD-Rom Authoring. I spent a lot of time playing with Macromedia software, Director and Flash (both of which I have not used in years - we used to refer to Macromedia software as the dark side). But there was other very cool stuff to be learned.
I did some work for a local design firm creating html sites, started a web site for a local community newspaper then started doing contract work for the Ottawa based NGO, the Canadian Public Health Association (CPHA). I created a bunch of static html sites for them like this one leadingtogether.ca. I also designed a couple of interfaces for online database applications that they were developing like the GRN Interactive Information Portal.
These CPHA static html sites were large beasts with hundreds of content pages. These sites were bilingual, so each site had discreet English and French content pages that were all manually cross-linked. It makes me cringe now just thinking about it. I even did one site in English, French and in Inuktitut. I used Dreamweaver templates to wrangle these mountains of static html pages. This really sucked.
On the other hand, doing the UI design for the database applications was really fun. Having all of the content in a database and pulling it out for display in various contexts was definitely the way to go. I did a project for the Learning and Instructional Development Centre at Simon Fraser University. This application ¡hola-canada had a very beautiful Flash front end but they needed an html version as well I designed this UI.
Doing large multilingual sites now is very easy now. Here is a Drupal site testbkk.org that is in English and Thai. The laplumeverte.ca site is a bilingual e-commerce site built with WordPress.
Over the years, have worked as a university AV technician, film projectionist, photographer, tree planter, webmaster and a website developer.
I am interested in history, social justice and travel.