David Essery

David Essery

Senior Web Developer

I am a Full Stack (primarily LAMP) Developer living in Southampton, England. I have 12 years of professional experience working for Marketing Agencies.

Web development has always been a hobby as much as a career for me. I have always loved problem solving and this field gives me infinite opportunities to come up with creative solutions to complex scenarios.

I have a passion for learning and relish the opportunity to grow my skills. The web is ever growing and as such, so do I.

I consider myself to be a creative developer as I have a strong eye for design. Although not a core part of my role during my career, it is a skill that provides me great benefit in interpreting designs, as well as improvising on the aspects of a website not covered by static visuals.

With 12 years of experience working in Marketing Agencies comes a wealth of Marketing knowledge which I am able to apply to the overall strategy of my projects to help ensure success.

Expertise

PHP

Databases

Content Management Systems

Although the above are my preferred systems, I am a firm believer in using the correct tool for the job and have used many additional systems over the years including; Joomla, Umbraco, EpiServer.

HTML

HTML has been the foundation of all my work since I began studying web design and ensuring it remains semantic and accessible is very important to me.

CSS

JavaScript

Version Control

I have been using Git for many years and am experienced working both solo and collaborating with teams.

I also have some basic experience with SVN due to working with the WordPress plugin repository.

HTML Emails

Developing emails that work across all devices can be a challenge, especially to work responsively with mobile devices. I have many years experience building email templates and have learned many tips and tricks to make the process simpler.

HubSpot

I have been working with the HubSpot for over 5 years and have a wealth of experience in several areas of the tool:

Server Administration

Working with Clients

Throughout my whole professional career, I have been responsible for working directly with and building relationships with clients, either as the sole contact or providing technical expertise to account management teams. Within this role I have been able to resolve issues as well as up sell opportunities.

I have also been responsible for assisting in new business development. This has taken many forms including; gathering requirements, creating and documenting specifications, quoting for projects and presenting proposals directly to clients.

Personal Organisation

I have spent many years working in small teams without a project manager and therefore my personal organisation has been critical. This experience has allowed me to manage my own workloads, meet deadlines and communicate directly with clients.

Experience

Due to confidentiality, I am unable to post direct links or client names to the projects listed below but if you would like more information, please get in touch.

Component Based Development

Working as an agency, we were always looking to improve efficiency on projects. While looking for areas of improvement, we identified that within our projects, we were re-using many common interface elements such as Slideshows, Banners, Content Panels, Grids of Cards etc.

Although it was possible to copy both SASS and JavaScript modules between projects, we found that we were often having to redraw elements during the design phase and it took time to search for previously used examples in other projects, which then needed to be stripped back before applying the new design. Although this did save us time as opposed to re-doing work on each project, it could have been more efficient.

To improve this process, I developed a system which included the following aspects:

Using all of these assets meant that we were able to quote more accurately on projects, as well as execute projects quickly and efficiently.

Social Enterprise Coaching Website

I worked with a client who had successfully launched a social enterprise and wanted to use this experience to teach other charities how to do the same.

I developed a platform built on WordPress that enabled prospective enterprises to sign up and have a dashboard. Within this there were several modules which they had to complete. This involved completing very complex forms, which could then be reviewed by a coach and feedback submitted through the platform. Once a user had completed a module, their coach could unlock the next module. It also allowed them to generate PDF's of each module's results including information such as SWOT Analysis.

The final solution used flexible layouts within the Advanced Custom Fields plugin to allow the website admins to generate their own complex forms which could then collect user data, store it to the database and ultimately be output on screen or as a PDF.

Product Selectors

Another client who build bespoke processors had a requirement to allow their users to enter specific requirements and see which processors would best meet their needs, in some cases this could involve multiple instances of the same processor.

The output of this needed to present dynamic graphs and stats which changed based on the requirements and the number of processors needed.

The final solution was developed using Vue.js and has become a first in class for their industry and is providing a massive opportunity for growth.

Zoom Event Management System

I developed a bespoke WordPress plugin to allow management of large-scale meetings run over the Zoom video conferencing platform. The requirement was for users to be able to:

The plugin built contains a full record of all bookings with the data encrypted in the database. Bookings can be edited, gifted, cancelled. A link to the recording is uploaded after each event which each user can access through a login.

In addition, users can also purchase a recording even if they did not attend the original event.

Users can also be emailed directly through the dashboard making communication simple with all users registered to an event.

About Me

When not building websites, my hobbies include: