Decor Scene was a smaller, simpler project I worked on. Mike from Decor Scene tasked me with creating a simple, user-friendly website that gave Decor Scene, a family run DIY store, a web presence. For the main design I approached a company I had recently worked with Webslash to design a simple, elegant and modern website that made an impact on any user who visited. After a few drafts we were there and it was down to me to slice the design and code it. As the site itself is rather simple I wanted to use the most efficient methods available and so split the website into three parts:

• Header – Template
• Content – Custom for each page
• Footer – Template

By making the header and footer both templates it saved greatly on development times and served to make the website easier to update in the future.

A problem I encountered with this however arrived when it came to adding Google Maps to make it easier for potential customers to find the shop. Google Maps code is usually added to the head parts of the HTML and then an onload function is added to the body, so when the body is fully loaded Google Maps loads. It would be very inefficient to include the code on each page and could potentially generate errors so I simply included a check to see if it exists. I could then create this function just on the “Find Us” page and then use a small bit of javascript that checks if “runjavascript()” is defined, if it is, it runs it:

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if(typeof window.runjavascript == 'function') {
runjavascript();
}

I think this is the more efficient or at least simplest way to do this, if anyone has a better way then let me know!

Some SEO work was also done on the website to ensure it hit page 1 on Google on some terms such as “DIY Store Rickmansworth”, “Decor Scene”, “Decor Scene Rickmansworth”, “DIY Shop Rickmansworth”; part of this was adding the business to Google Maps which benefits both customers and the business.

On final presentation to the client the response was very positive and whilst the website is fairly simple at the moment it certainly has left room for expansion in the future!

Related posts:

1. City Coupons
2. Jokepants
3. phpGSB – PHP Google Safe Browsing

Web development firm Webslash approached me with the task of integrating their design for a new joke sharing website, Jokepants, into an existing script called FMyScript. FMyScript is a story sharing script. This was a relatively quick project as the script was already coded and just required modifications to make it suitable for jokes as opposed to stories.

After I had sliced and programmed the design into wc3 valid XHTML and CSS it was simply a task of splitting the page into the seperate parts required for FMyScript’s SMARTY templating engine, i.e. header, footer, sidebar and content boxes.

After the base design was in place some minor definitions in the script had to be modified and a few bugs had to be fixed in the actual script. After this was complete Jokepants was ready for launch!

Related posts:

1. Decor Scene
2. City Coupons
3. [PHP] Get current time in milliseconds

City Coupons, a very recent project, in essence is a full content management for coupons. Using the system you are able to add printable, SMS and viewable coupons to your website. In addition to this, the system has a range of other features to offer. Started at the beginning of November ’09 and completed with version 1.0.2 in February ’10 its certainly been a large but exciting project.

Startup

In November I was asked to create a piece of coupon management software that would:

• Allow businesses to sign up and pay automatically.
• Enable businesses to manage their business profiles on the site, including locations, media, descriptions and above all coupons & offers.
• Give the site administrator full control over the site in the simplest way possible.
• To incorporate some sort of events calendar into the site that would gather all invidual business events.

We started with a basic design which was heavily edited to fit with the feel of the site. I then started work on coding the back-end into classes (object orientated) to make upgrading and modifying the site a lot more modular.

Payment System

The site is integrated with the PayPal IPN payment processing which will, after a business has gone through checkout, notify the site and will automatically activate their account. In addition to this it also has an automated billing program that will periodically check to ensure that all businesses are up to date on their payments. If not it will send the business an invoice with three days grace period. After that their account will be suspended until they activate their account. Of course this can always be overridden in the site admin panel.

Business Page & Coupons

An important aspect of the site was enabling businesses to have their own “online presence”, this was achieved by giving each business their own profile page in addition to their various offers appearing site-wide. On this page businesses can display all of their locations alongside Google Maps, uploaded media, events and other exciting items.

Having a list of offers on the website may not be much use to a lot of people, City Coupons enables users to print and send the offer to their cell phone. The printing system used is major improvement over the type used on similar coupon websites. It enables you to specify the quantity of the coupon you wish to print and even place different coupons on the same page if you bookmark them. The SMS service has no operating costs and uses data processing techniques specific to each major carrier in the US.

Administering the Site

In the Vendor Admin Panel (for businesses) you are able to easily modify any aspect of your profile through the various tabs on the page conveniently titled, Offers, Locations, Events, Media, Profile etc. Likewise the Site Admin Panel is arranged similarly but with a wide range of options from full user management to bulk newsletter services and footer modifications.

To make the system even more interactive; it is integrated with the WordPress blog system to provide the blogging and article aspects of the site. WordPress is one of the best systems in the world for this and it would be senseless to reinvent the wheel. It however does include several City Coupons themes and plugins for full integration with the member system and site design.

The default site design is easily customizable and is available in a variety of colours, some different colours used by current owners of the system are shown in the thumbnails below.

Conclusion

Overall the City Coupons project was great fun and as always I developed my programming skills. My knowledge of WordPress has been greatly improved, my coding standards have risen significantly and I now know how to generate PDF’s from pure PHP! The client had a firm vision of what the site should be like and it certainly helped me to create exactly what he envisioned.

Related posts:

1. Decor Scene
2. Jokepants
3. Twerq

Me!

Hi. I’m Sam Cleaver, a first year student at Coventry University in Electrical Systems Engineering. I’m also a web developer with almost 7 years experience in programming. I can code in HTML, CSS, Javascript, AJAX (jQuery), Perl, PHP, MySQL in addition to server system administration. I used to live in Hemel Hempstead (now mostly Coventry) I went to The Cavendish School where I studied the usual core subjects and in addition to them, German at GCSE level and then I.T and Design & Technology: Product Design at A-Level.

I have been active in the web community for a long time now, most commonly on forums such as NamePros and DevShed where I post problems as well as most commonly answering them . There have been various exciting projects I have worked on over the years, from creating my own content management systems to creating entire websites as Twerq and FetchMP3.

I am a determined individual that very rarely gives up on anything, even when tasks seem almost impossible, *cough* fetchmp3′s flv retrieval system *cough*.  I take a good approach to problem solving and never have a problem trying to take a completely different approach to a problem if it results in a faster resolution. I work well in teams and often find that by delegation and finding peoples strengths and weaknesses a very effective team is not very hard to establish at all no matter what the task ahead is.

In addition to my freelance web developer work and studying at University, I also work at Debenhams providing great customer service to everyone!

Oh and check out the links below for my facebook, last.fm, twitter etc etc!

If you have any questions just leave a comment here or contact me via the contact form here.

Related posts:

1. My Skills
2. Twerq
3. City Coupons

• XHTML/CSS - 6 Years
• Javascript - 5 Years
• PHP/MySQL - 5 Years
• AJAX - 4 Years
• Unix/Linux administration - 3 Years
• jQuery library specifically - 3 Years
• Perl - 1 Year

I am forever expanding my library of programming languages and hope to learn either Java, C# or Actionscript in the near future!

Related posts:

1. About Me
2. Twerq
3. Bash, Bad Interpreter

I worked on Twerq roughly three years ago now and it has been one of the biggest projects I’ve undertaken to date. At its core Twerq enables users to very easily search and find multiple items all in one go. It was one of the first services to “mashup” content, pulling together videos, images and text to help the user to find all the information they could possibly need on a specified search term. In addition to regular searches it also parses rss feeds on some of the worlds most popular news sources such as the BBC, Reuters and CNN.

It features repeat searching, bulk searching, mashups, rss feeds. For me the biggest challenge in this project was creating it so it was both scalable and as feature packed as it could possibly be. Search engine API’s were used a lot in the construction of the project, Google, Yahoo etc. For those items that did not feature API’s I had to use a technique called page scraping or “data mining” to retrieve the desired information for processing. To make this process even more efficienct I implemented caching to reduce bandwidth and overall load on the server.

Unlike FetchMP3, a more recent project, Twerq was not put through a formal closed beta test phase, instead we thoroughly tested at each stage of development to ensure that all was functioning as should be before a public beta.

This website required a combination of skills including:

• XHTML/CSS (WC3 valid)
• PHP/MySQL
• Additional Server Module Installation for PHP and Apache etc
• Javascript/AJAX (jQuery library)

Twerq has so many features it would be impossible to explain them all here so check it out at http://www.twerq.com.

Related posts:

1. FetchMP3.com
2. City Coupons
3. About Me

My latest and greatest project is a culmination of many many hours of both research and programming. Originally launched at the beginning of December, 2008, it has recently reached version 3. It includes the use of ajax, caching, php, mysql and intergration with external scripts such as ffmpeg and custom bash scripts.

FetchMP3.com in a nutshell is an audio ripping website. It has the ability to perform searches on some of the most popular video sites in the world, download a video that the user selects and extract the audio. This is especially useful for listening to speeches, audiobooks etc on iPods. Of course this can already be done using offline desktop tools but the process can often be arduous and time-consuming. FetchMP3.com has the ability to allow users to search a video site through FetchMP3′s built-in search engine, select a video and within a minute have it converted into a fully functional mp3 file.

The client in this project was a company called PapaFace, through constant contact with the client a service has been created that meets above and beyond the initial specification.

I have learnt a lot during the course of this project, I have developed good understanding of bash scripts, maintaining and installing additional *NIX modules and of course troubleshooting.

To sum it up I have used the following skills in the creation of FetchMP3:

• PHP/MySQL
• Javascript/Ajax (in particular the jQuery library)
• Bash scripting
• Script configuration/installation (ffmpeg, json, mcurl)
• Script customisation (mcurl)
• Server administration (installation of various modules, modifications to system configuration)

Some thumbnails are below:

Related posts:

1. Twerq
2. Bash, Bad Interpreter
3. My Skills