Stork – New Website is launched

I received a lovely email this morning thanking me for my input and hard work on the development of the new Stork website.

“The brand is 90 years old this year and as part of the birthday celebrations we wanted to create a site which the new generation of bakers, inspired by the likes of Jamie Oliver and Nigella, could engage with and use as hub of knowledge for all things cake.”

You can visit the site at www.bakewithstork.co.uk

Mmm…Mattessons

Today is the day… Two fast (and sausages filled) weeks later and we’re ready for the launch of the new Mattessons website.

Our deadline for this project was determined by a new TV ad that’s coming out today and so the flexibility in timings was somewhat limited.

We decided to use Wordpress for this project which means this is also my first commercial project on the WAMP stack. The decision to go with Wordpress was based on a few different criteria, the first being…time.

Anyone who’s been working with Wordpress for any period of time will know how fast it can be to get a site up and running in no time at all. The time investment comes when you’re developing a complete custom template…enter Mattessons!

As the lead developer on the Mattessons project I had to make some calls as to what amount of content management we were going to be offering to our client. The more they were able to manage, the longer it’d take in the development process. My decisions mostly revolved around the idea of “Lets do what we can to give them control over all content items”.

We did this by employing some nice use of custom fields, the creation of a very basic custom markup language for inserting custom property values into page copy and by creating a system where pages themselves can be pulled into other pages and displayed as promos/previews.

You’ll notice on the homepage of the new website that there are currently two promos being displayed. These promos are pages in themselves, just as are the products in the Our Range section and the footer items.

Wordpress makes it really easy to get information about the current page and it’s child pages which enabled us to create a basic yet powerful hierarchy of products and product ranges. We’re also using a great plugin for relating pages to one another in a more lateral way. This again is being used in a slightly different way than standard by pulling out information on related pages and then obtaining those page details through the standard Wordpress API.

All-in-all this has been a really fun project to work on. It’s been fast paced with a quick turn around and it’s been a joy working with a talented team of managers, designers, QAs and front end developers.

What can I say… “It’s a Primal Thing”.

1000 Reputation on StackOverflow

Today I hit the 1000 reputation points mark on StackOverflow.

Reputation points are given by other users of StackOverflow for giving good answers to other peoples questions and for asking good questions yourself.

I’m a big fan of peer review and reaching the 1000 reputation points mark is a real milestone in my own quest to help other programmers and to ask good questions.

Here’s to the next 1000 !

Shower? That’ll be £30 please!

When was the last time you paid your hard earned money to take a shower? (do we even call it ‘taking’ a shower in this country? Should I say ‘have’ a shower?)

The journey to and from work has been part and parcel of working away from home since the beginning of mankind.

Ever since my second real job, I’ve taken either public transport or driven. I think there comes a time in every persons life when they realise they’re not quite as fit as they’d like to be and for me, that time is now.

As a result of this I made a decision to start cycling to work. Boris would be proud!

I set out and bought myself a new bicycle, helmet, bike lock, new snap proof pedals (since the plastic ones on the bike snapped off after I ‘tested’ the bike at the weekend) and various bits and bobs including a pump and mudguard (this got very expensive, very quickly!).

My route to work takes me through some lovely parts of London including Putney, Wimbledon, and across the River Thames over a distance of 8.9 miles.

18 miles a day, that’s bound to help increase my fitness and keep the old endorphins flowing. Right?

The only problem is, there are no showering facilities at work! I hear your cries, agast with the anguish of having to sit at work all day smelling like a 4 day dead hedgehog lying by the side of a summers road during a heat wave. So what’s a guy to do?

My first thought was that a quick wash in the sink would suffice. This may indeed be the answer and I’ve certainly not ruled it out.

I had this conversation with another potential cyclist at work and I presented my ideas of the sink wash to an unenthusiastic “yeah, you could do that, I guess”.

My second idea involved scouting out other local businesses and finding one with showering facilities. I figured I could just walk into an office each day, greet them with the usual “Good morning, nice to see you again, love what you’ve done with your hair today”, and proceed to shower and scoot.

It was at this point I was presented with a third option by my new cycling friend. “Why don’t we join the gym over the road so we can use their showers? It’s only £30 a month so you’d only have to cycle 10 days each month to have earned that back in saved transport costs.”

I like the idea of being able to have a nice warm shower each morning after a lengthy ride to work, but £30 a month to shower? That seems just a little backwards to me.

Instantly I responded with “What a great idea! Do you think we can convince them to let us just use the showers for free?”. Those who know me wont be surprised that this was my initial reaction. “Payment you say? How about a lifetimes free trial? yes? yes?”.

Usually when I sugest anything that involves negotiating or being a bit cheeky I’m met with groans and smug looks that sugest “You sunny, don’t know the system like the rest of us do, such innocence”. Yes, indeed.

So what would you do in this situation? Would you pay £30 a month to shower? Try to negotiate a fair rate to use the gym’s showers in the morning? Infiltrate other local businesses? or go for the old strip wash in the sink?

Answers on a postcard…(By ‘answers’ I mean comments and by ‘postcard’ i mean in the little box below).

A new project begins – StatPro

Good news! Good for me anyway. During my recent search for a new project and team to work with, I’ve been invited to join the team at StatPro in Wimbledon, working as their SaaS Web Developer.

The role looks very interesting and I’ve been told I’ll be working on a new greenfield project using ASP.NET MVC (C# 3.5+).

Here’s a little bit about StatPro from their website:

StatPro is a leading provider of portfolio analytics and data solutions for the global asset management industry. Having grown from a one-product company StatPro now offers our clients eight core products including data and enterprise reporting solutions. This range of products enables StatPro to provide a unique integrated product offering with a strong competitive advantage.

One of the most important things to me in any company I work with is their passion and desire to firstly, allow the business and it’s staff run in an adaptive and progressive manner, and secondly for them to embrace new technologies as they arise.

StatPro are one of the first companies I’ve seen to be commercially utilising ASP.NET MVC and as someone passionate about new technology and innovation, this really hits my hot buttons. The company have also embraced many of the agile processes and are actively bringing in more Unit Testing and TDD methodologies. Working in iterative cycles also ticks at least one of the boxes and having worked this way before, it comes as a real pleasure to be involved with a company who know what works well.

Finding out what works from both the companies perspective (what value is offered to the business) and also the staff’s perspective (what can I realistically achieve in any given period of time) is a great place to start from and keeps the whole inner workings of the development and business processes transparent.

Throughout my time at StatPro I’ll be blogging about my continued learning’s of ASP.NET MVC, C# 3.5, Web Development and general musings into the life of the nine-to-five London worker.

Luckily I’ll be able to cycle to work from now on and avoid the tube which will be a nice change and might even help get me back to being fit once again. Hey, who knows, perhaps soon I’ll be blogging about keeping trim and attending lunch time yoga classes (It’s a nice idea huh? :p ).