A bit about me
I'm a developer from Manchester, UK. I graduated in web development at Manchester Metropolitan University in 2011 and have been working in the industry every since. My day job is writing scalable CSS and creating enjoyable user experiences. A frontend developer by trade, I have frequent encounters with the backend, mostly thanks to my work with Wordpress and therefore with PHP.
I am passionate about user experience, behaviour and psychology. I love to ponder design problems in usability and site architecture and come up with solutions to create great user experiences.
I like to keep my brain sharp by, for example, attending meetups (shoutout to NUX and McrFRED), playing guitar and reading various books and blogs (I highly recommend Farnam Street).
Things I've worked on
Here are some of my most recent and noteworthy projects. All of the projects listed below have been worked on on behalf of my employer at the time, thus they are not all solely works of my own and various talented colleagues have helped me to create them.
John Ryan By Design
Customised Woocommerce site
CSS styles and architecture, Javascript functionality, PHP templating, PHP functions
View project details
English Lakes Ice Cream
Visual design focused Wordpress site
CSS styles and architecture, CMS, PHP templating, Javascript functionality
View project details
Build in progress
Undisclosed / build in progress
Multi step checkout process
Javascript, CSS / SASS, PHP templating
View project details
Health Assured
Corporate Wordpress site
CSS / SASS, PHP templating, Javascript
Aquired skills and toolbelt
These are the skills that I consider my strongest and most valuable, these are inherently the skills I have spent the most time working on, practicing and shooting for those 10,000 hours with.
CSS & SASS
My main focus throughout my developer days has been good ol' CSS. Over time I have developed a desire to write maintainable, scalable and well, just good CSS. I use SASS, the BEM syntax (mostly), read lots of Harry Roberts's ideas and am probably becoming overly reliant on flexbox.
View a portfolio examplePHP
An initial necessity due to building for Wordpress, I have grown to enjoy writing PHP and doing tutorials to help improve my skills. I most often use it to create a maintainable frontend structure and to output the data that I need for markup but have recently delved in to writing functions more focused on backend tasks.
View a portfolio exampleJavascript
My Javascript skills have grown from struggling to figure out how to use jQuery plugins to writing my own custom functionality. Though I know my way around it to an intermediate level, this is a key area I'd like to continue to improve on.
View a portfolio exampleWordpress
20% of the internet is built on Wordpress and around 99% of my websites are. Building in Wordpress has often been my day job and I have done everything from hacking templates to custom Woocommerce builds.
View a portfolio exampleDesign
My design experience comes from working with some great designers and interpreting their designs for the web. Though I have a good eye for what looks good, my passion for design lies in the structural and user experience areas. I love to discuss and ponder user behaviour to help propose design solutions.
View a portfolio exampleOther skills
The frequency in which I use these tools / skills varies, as does my experience with each, to see more details go to the skills overview page.
- Git (command line)
- User behaviour
- Grunt
- CRO
- Woocommerce
- Magento
- Performance
- Photo / asset editing (Photoshop & Pixlr)
- SVG editing (Inkscape)
- Angular
- jQuery
- Jekyll
Though not web specific, some of these other skills are equally important to life as a developer and I believe others just say something about my character. My experience with each of the skills listed varies, to see more details go to the skills overview page.
- Guitar
- Time management
- Teamwork
- Psychology
- Language
- Client interaction
- Reading
- Involvement in dev community
- Growth mentality and desire to learn
Lovely people I've worked for
Candidsky
Frontend developer
February 2014 - January 2016
Working in a 4 person production team, built websites on various platforms, assisted in design phases, general site maintenance, client interaction, lead projects.
More detailsRobot Creative
Developer
June 2012 - November 2013
Working with the head of digital and a designer, built websites on platforms including Wordpress and Magento, general site maintenance and development, client interaction.
More detailsSalford University
Web assistant
August 2011 (temp)
Assisted in the completion of a new Salford University website.
More details
Contact me
You can find me occasionally tweeting, and more often retweeting the wisdom of others, at @jtuds
The best way to get in touch with me directly is via email at [email protected]