NextLevel Arts is the trade name for my independent contracting business, which provides high quality website design and development services.

Please see my business website for some examples of my work (just a handful of selected examples).

Skills used: PHP • MySQL • web application development • XHTML • hand coding • CSS • table-less layout • unobtrusive JavaScript • cross-browser / platform testing and compatibility assurance • Photoshop • image optimization • template slicing / development • site development • troubleshooting • debugging • bug fixing

I worked on client websites and Hawthorn Publications' own key web properties, eleGALA.com and HawthornPublications.com.

Skills used: HTML • CSS • JavaScript • jQuery • PHP • MySQL • ExpressionEngine • Ruby • Rails • table-less layout • Photoshop • site development • troubleshooting • debugging • bug fixing

Accomplishments included:

• Learned enough Ruby / Rails to implement bug fix and feature requests that had been outstanding for a year for an existing Rails app.
• Modified Capistrano deploy script to accept a 'branch' command line argument (using `-S`), to enable deploying any branch (not just master) from the Git repo.
• Implemented a hash constant in Rails environment config files to allow for application-wide, per-environment settings that are not part of Rails configuration, such as file system paths.
• Implemented dynamic integration between parts of a site running on a mixed infrastructure of PHP / ExpressionEngine and Ruby / Rails. In some cases this replaced hard-coded data that had been copied from one part to the other and had since changed at the source, rendering the copy no longer accurate.
• Wrote a custom Rake task to retrieve data from a Rails model and cache it as JSON, and wrote a PHP class to consume the JSON.
• Wrote an ExpressionEngine plugin to cache content generated by ExpressionEngine as JSON, and a Rails helper to consume the JSON.
• Refactored several messy implementations (PHP / JavaScript / ExpressionEngine) that weren't very dynamic, and therefore had a lot of code duplication, into much cleaner, more maintainable, dynamic versions without duplication.
• Refactored 8 repetitive ExpressionEngine template groups (each consisting of multiple templates) to a single set of unified templates. Eliminated a number of custom queries in favor of leveraging more built-in ExpressionEngine functionality, with the help of a custom plugin I wrote.
• Refactored a collection of pages (PHP / HTML / JavaScript) that consisted of repetitive files and duplicated code to a consolidated set of templates, PHP classes, and external JavaScript. Extracted data from repetitive switch statements into arrays and replaced switch statements with dynamic code accessing the arrays.
• Started an online repository of end user and developer documentation, to record, consolidate, and preserve information for current and future users in a central location (e.g. not buried in emails or existing only in individuals' minds).
• Implemented custom ExpressionEngine plugins and extensions.
• Recommended and implemented a more dynamic ExpressionEngine staging system, that I had previously engineered.
• Provided guidance to print designers inexperienced at web design.

I was recruited by Zenex Partners to provide front-end website development services to TiVo as a temporary employee, working remotely. TiVo provided me with Photoshop design compositions that I converted into hand-coded, table-less XHTML / CSS.

Skills used: XHTML • hand coding • CSS • table-less layout • unobtrusive JavaScript • Photoshop