Matthew Gaffen

Over the years I have built many WordPress websites. Over this time I have adopted some best practices; like using Timber to abstract WordPress into the VC part of MVC, and handling dependency management via Composer and the TGM Plugin Activation library. I have also done several integrations of Wordpress with external API's like Twitter, Instagram, and Zoopla; scraping information at regular intervals using wp_cron and caching it as json_files to help negate rate limits. I tend to treat Wordpress more like a development framework than a blog engine, making thorough usage of custom post types. I am currently building my first example of a website that uses WordPress as a headless CMS via the REST API. The branding agency I work for has very exacting design standards and so all themes I have built have been bespoke, each with their own unique design and coding challenges.

I have been dabbling in HTML and CSS since I was a young child, and have become intimately familiar with numerous cross browser caveats over the years. I now try to make sure I build all the sites I work on using mustard cutting, with sensible fallbacks (at least to the browsers that are agreed to be supported in the contract). Though if necessary I can support back to IE6 quite happily.

Javascript was really my introduction to programming in earnest. I am probably a little too attached to jQuery still for the sake for convenience, but have begun to abandon it, especially now that I've started to build React applications. I have also written some serverside node code for controlling microcontrollers using the Johnny 5 library at a few NodeBots meetups. In terms of serious javascript I have mostly used it for enriching frontend website experience, and have made extensive use of libraries such as GSAP, Magicscroll and Packery to create dynamic page layouts and animations. I also wrote a particle system in vanilla js which you can see on my personal website. I try to make my code as modular as possible, and to that end I use a gulp build chain to assemble bundles of modules using the common.js pattern to keep development tidy.

I have built one major application in Laravel which utilises OAuth 2.0 to allow authentication with a RESTful API for a travel agency. The app has a custom built administrative interface and login for managing the database. I planned and built the relational database structure, which was implemented over several iterations The REST API is accessed by a partner Android application which I also built

I have built one major Android app so far; an internal administrative tour management app for a travel agency. The app handles carrying out registers of customers, looking up traveller information, downloading helpful resources for the tour, and more. The app pulls its data from a RESTful JSON API, authenticating via OAuth 2.0. The app also has significant offline functionality, as tour guides would often be in areas of low reception. The interface was highly customised to fit with the clients' brand, and looks very little like a stock android experience. I have also forked and done custom development on Chat Secure by The Guardian Project as a project in my spare time, which has now become 'Zom'. I even contributed a line of code to the repo! (Though this was delivered in a comment on an issue than as a pull request)

I have been writing PHP for many years and am comfortable with the language, though as I mainly write PHP as part of a larger framework my experience with bespoke development in PHP is limited.

I maintain the server for the branding consultancy I work for, duties include maintaining live websites, deploying via git, setting up ssl certificates (now via letsencrypt), and even setting up a mail server complete with admin interface, courtesy of Vimbadmin, though I am currently looking at migrating to Open Xchange. I know enough to be proficient at my job, but I wouldn't call myself a hardcore linux hacker exactly. Though I can quite happily setup a linux box from install to full server deployment.