About Me
Hi, my name is Chris Bartlett and I am a Full-Stack Web Developer with over 20 years corporate/agency experience in both Frontend & Backend web development
I like building websites. I always have. I started teaching myself HTML after I grduated with a degree in Politics & Government from the University of Essex way back in 1997.
In 1998 I got my first job as HTML editor for the ir group in London. They were a small investor relations agency who specialised in creating finacial websites for companies. I used to recreate 100 pages of financial reports by handcoding HTML tables - so as you can imagine I got quite good at HMTL!
Risk Publications
In Decemeber 1999, just before the Y2K bug that never happened, I moved to financial publishing and conference company - Risk Publications as a Web Producer. I worked on a custom financial search engine, creating HTML static pages for the article side of the search engine. There were 3 of us at the start and we launched the company's first corporate site. From there we started launching all company's publications websites.
The team grew and I later became team leader to a team of 12 web developers. I became WEBMASTER lol and then later Senior Producer (much better!). I helped advise the company's first custom built PHP CMS and started recreating the static sites in the CMS. We started learning CSS as it had just come out. We built hundress of small sites and email newsletters.
The team was comprised of frontend developers so I started to learn PHP to help build modules for the CMS. Over the years I became increasingly drawn towards backend web development coding in PHP and SQL for MySQL.
Incisive Media
After nurmerous acquisitions we grew in size to about 20 so we split the team and I moved over the backend team. We started building a new PHP CMS but was then aquired by Incisve Media and who decided to outsource the work and chaned to a Ruby on Rails CMS. I then learnt Ruby on Rails and built many small internal systems, such as the IT helpdesk, in Ruby on Rails.
I also looked after the a medium size Magento 1.9 bookstore and started the fun process of upgrading to Magento 2.0, which was halted after I found a bug with Magento 2.0 core group products.
I used Jenkins, gulp and git to create a workflow for the frontend team to publish to the dev, staging and live servers.
Hong Kong
Fancing a change in 2011 I transfered to the Hong Kong office and have lived here ever since.
In 2017, after 18 years at Incisive Media, I left and joined Wecreate Advertising Agency as a web developer. Shortly after I became Lead Developer. At Wecreate I built and worked on a huge amount of client websites many of which you can see in my portfolio section.
TL;DR
- Building bespoke web sites and business applications in PHP, Javascript and Ruby.
- Work well with designers, project managers and other developers, within tight deadlines.
- Full software development life-cycle from initial client requirements, analysis, through to implementation and deployment.
- Happy to lead a team, work within one or alone on projects.
- Always willing to learn new technologies.
- Creates pixel perfect websites
- Able to communicate complex ideas to C-level and different stakeholders
- An active developer with managerial skills
- Native English Speaker
- Willing to change country if sponsored
- Open to remote work
- UK citizien
- Permanent resident in Hong Kong
- At the moment I have a full-time job so can only work in my spare time.
- Feel free to Get in touch.
Current Job Role
At Wecreate I'm actually doing 3 jobs in one:
- I manage a team of developers. We started with 3 of us, went up to 8 at one point and back down to 4 at the moment.
- Perform weekly team meetings updating the team about events and any going through any problem the team might have and how to help fix them - be it technical or workflow related
- Perform weekly one on one meetings with the team and the PMs to manage their workflow and project updates
- Help the team out whenever they have problems and mentor junior memebers
- I sit in on dev meetings with PMs to help their project run smoothly and advise on any issues.
- Hold performance reviews for the devs
- Provide leadership in the development and implementation of Wecreates digital roadmap
- Ensure projects progress smoothly through the software development life cycle
- Participate in requirements gathering, application design, planning and review.
- Acts as a bridge between the development team and Project Management and Design and Creative Director
- Help with estimating development work for quotations
- I'm the sysadmin. Well I'm not really a sysAdmin but I look after the company's servers:
- I setup all servers and client servers through AWS and Google Cloud.
- I setup a Gitlab server to allow the dev team to have a private repo.
- I setup plesk on our dev and client server, along with company GSuite email
- I move sites from dev to live or clients servers
- I fix any problems we have on the servers, apache, nginx, php, etc
- I'm also a full time web developer.
- I've worked on at least 50 websites in the last 4 years
- I've worked on mainly Wordpress-based websites, but also Drupal, Laravel, Gatsby, nodejs and static HTML websites.
- I've created about 20 websites completely by myself, and co-worked on about another 10 websites and fixed, added functionality or finished about another 20 sites.
- Learnt React and Gatsby during this time.
If you are intersted in hiring me for freelance work please Get in touch.
MY WEB DESIGN & DEVELOPMENT PROCESS
RESEARCH
After the quotation has been agreed I will conduct and in-depth research into your project so I know exactly what you want.
DEVELOPMENT
After the UI has been agreed I will start development and this is where I build the site. I will begin an iterative process until complete.
TESTING
Once development has been completed we will both test on my development server. This is where we perform User Acceptance Testing (UAT).
LAUNCH
Once UAT has been completed and signed-off we are ready to launch your site either on my hosted servers or using your own host. Your users will be able to use your new site now.
RELATIONSHIP
After we have gone live this isn't the end. I would like to build a long lasting relationship with my clients and help with any further upgrades or new sites.
RESEARCH
After the quotation has been agreed I will conduct and in-depth research into your project so I know exactly what you want.
DESIGN CONCEPT
After the research stage we begin to design your site through User Experience (UX) and User Interface (UI) web design.
DEVELOPMENT
After the UI has been agreed I will start development and this is where I build the site. I will begin an iterative process until complete.
TESTING
After the site has been built you will be able to begin UAT. You will be able to view and test the process on my development server.
LAUNCH
Once UAT has been completed and signed-off we are ready to launch your site either on my hosted servers or using your own host. Your users will be able to use your new site now.
RELATIONSHIP
After we have gone live this isn't the end. I would like to build a long lasting relationship with my clients and help with any further upgrades or new sites.
Tech I use
AWS
AWS is huge and has so many different hosting solutions there is always something there for everyone.
Apache
I started off using Apache for many years. Whilst it's still a good Web Server I prefer Nginx.
CSS / CSS3
Whilst I can use CSS frameworks (like Bootstrap) I much prefer to write my own CSS from scratch - well through SASS.
Centos
My preferred hosting OS. Centos is very stable and secure.
Domain / DNS
I've bought and managed domain portfolios with a few hundred domains in them. I've used countless registrars and DNS systems.
Drupal
Druapl is a powerful CMS and I've worked on theming a Drupal 8 site which you can see in my portfolio.
Gatsby
You can write some blazingly fast sites with Gatsby and this portfolio site is written using Gatsby and Markdown files.
Git
For years we struggled along with SVN until Git came out and changed how we use version control.
Github
Github is a great remote git hosting solution. I don't have much on my Github profile as most of my work is done using Gitlab.
Gitlab
Gitlab, like Github is a remote hosting solution, except you can host your own gitlab server for free.
Google Cloud
One of the main alternatives to AWS is Google Cloud and we use Google Cloud extensively at Wecreate.
GraphQL
A great API alternative to REST. I'm using Graphql to query Markdown files on this website.
Gulp
I used to use Gulp until Webpack came out. It's an automation tool for turning SASS into CSS and minifying / concatinating JS.
HTML5
My first language and one I'm constantly using - from normal HTML5 static pages to HTML in JSX.
Invision
Used to showcase web designs to clients & receive feedback through comments. I can get style / other info from it to build our sites.
JQuery
Ah the old favourite, has received a lot of unwarranted bad press since JS frameworks have come out. But it's still incredibly powerful.
JavaScript
Since ES6 I've really started to enjoy vanilla Javascript again and am doing more and more projects written in it.
JavaScript
My favourite language as so beautiful and straightforward to write - but modern JS (ES6 onwards) is giving it a run for it's money.
Jenkins
Jenkins is a CI tool. I've used to a few times at Incisive Media to automate certain tasks involving Git and images.
Jira
Hugely powerful and probably not needed at every company but I have experience in using it for a few years.
Laravel
Laravel maybe started off as a Rails clone but has come into it's own. One of the most popular PHP frameworks.
Magento
I've worked on Magento 1 & 2 sites. More powerful and scales better than Woocommerce but is way more complex.
MongoDB
MongoDB is a powerful NoSQL database that I've used on a few ocassions.
MySQL
I've used MySQL and SQL language for many years and along with Postgres is a powerdful database.
Nginx
Nginx is my favourite web server. More lightweight and fatser than Apache. Can also be used as a reverse-proxy with Apache.
Node.js
With Node.js, express.js and Javascript you don't need any other languages for a full-stack solution.
PHP
My first scripting language and one I've used for many many years. From writing plain PHP to PHP in Laravel and Wordpress.
Photoshop
Whilst I'm not much of a design I can use Photoshop to retreive info for creating sites and cutting up images.
Plesk
At Wecreate I use Plesk on several servers. I really like the interface and whilst you can't do as much as Cpanel I prefer it.
Rails
Rails is Ruby's partner in crime. They go so well together and my favourite framework.
React
React is a really amazing frontend Javascript framework. With React and other libraries you can create some awesome sites.
Redmine
I've setup Redmine of our own private servers a couple of times and used it for a few years at Incisive Media. It is a nice PM system.
SASS
SASS makes writing CSS even more enjoyable and allows for simpler writing.
Shopify
I've played around with Shopify for a while now and it's very nice - really would like me to develop a Shopify site soon!
Trello
I use Trello, along with the PMs, to manage my teams overall to do list.
Ubuntu
My second favourtie hosting OS - Ubuntu is also a nice linux desktop OS as well.
Webpack
Whilst complex Webpack is a very powerful JavaScript module bundler. I use this for my Wordpress sites and Javascript sites.
Woocommerce
Transforms Wordpress into fully functioning Ecommerce site. I have worked on many Woocommerce sites.
Wordpress
Very easy to use and extendible you can write all sorts of sites in it. The last 4 years I have been specialising in Wordpress.