About
Hi, I’m James and I’ve worked in the web dev industry for over 6 years, starting via the SEO industry. I have experience in WordPress developing themes using ACF (Advanced Custom Fields) and site builders like Elementor. I also have experience in WordPress plugin development. An example is the button above marked “Free Elementor Widget” where I made a slider for Elementor but it installs as a WordPress plugin. Feel free to click through to see how that works. Please read on for my portfolio and work experience.
Please note that I’m not a web designer, if you need one I can source one for you. Otherwise I can work with templates and a bit of direction. Thanks.
Let’s chat – call 07838 220295
Website Migration from Squarespace to WordPress
Fix a few bugs on my WordPress website built with Elementor
Details:
Looking for someone to fix issues on my WordPress website, mostly mobile optimization issues.
Add video to page
Adding a video to the website which is a WordPress/Woocommerce build with WPBakery for content.
Portfolio
Hiking the Earth
A client, who had a hiking blog, wanted to add hiking data to pages where they had visited certain peaks in the country. Originally they wanted to combine potential data from an ACF setup to be integrated into Elementor. However, this proved to be not entirely possible due to the complexity with how the client wanted certain elements of the data to work.
Luckily, I had experience with making custom Elementor widgets that allowed what they wanted to be possible. You can see an example of the above image here, in this page about the Yorkshire 3 peak challenge
Heating Oil
This site was created using WordPress and the site builder Elementor. Designs were supplied using Figma. The website link uses the archive.org reference to show the original design. The work was done whilst I was with CTi Digital, based in Manchester.
Heating Oil site (via archive.org)
Burgen Bread
This site was created using WordPress and the Timber plugin. Designs were supplied via Figma. The work was done whilst I was with CTi Digital, based in Manchester.
*Timber is a WordPress plugin that uses the Twig templating language – see here
Scottish Fuels
This site was created using WordPress and the site builder Elementor. I came in partway through the site build to finish off after another developer left the project. The work was done whilst I was with CTi Digital, based in Manchester.
Work Experience
WordPress Developer (Freelance) – Upwork: Mallula Ltd
May 2024 – Present
• Implemented client specified design mockups using WP Bakery via WordPress
• Set up a staging site for safe website testing without causing disruptions on the live site
• Troubleshooting the PHP code of the theme to ensure correct functionality of the site and correct errors
• Implemented a dynamic user role change when a specific Woocommerce order was placed via WordPress hooks. This was to allow that user access to specific data over other roles.
• Customised the My Account area of Woocommerce for site specific menus over the default ones
• Migrated websites between different hosting providers
• Technologies: ACF, WordPress, WooCommerce, WPBakery
WordPress Developer (Freelance) – Upwork: YorPower
May 2024 – Present
• Troubleshooting the PHP code of the theme to ensure correct functionality of the site and correct errors
• Updated the PHP based menu and utilised the correct css code to ensure correct styling of both the desktop and mobile menus
• Created WordPress Custom Post Types for specific pages, like locations pages
• Created a category page using the current page design and a new WordPress template page
• Implemented various small changes to the front end including, changes to button text, adding extra images to the product page, updating the site logo and ensuring all works responsively
• Technologies: ACF, WordPress, WooCommerce
Twig Developer (Freelance) – Upwork: Nemaa Theme
May 2024 – July 2024
• First exposure to the Salla Marketplace & Twilight (similar to Shopify)
• Frontend bug fixes to the Nemaa theme
• Various CSS fixes to the site including, image alignment issues, incorrect image proportions, hero banner responsiveness, Safari specific issues
• Use of Github to make branches to bug fixes
• Use of Trello to keep track of bug fixing status with client
• Technologies: Twig, Tailwind CSS, SCSS & Javascript
PHP Developer – Mosquito/CTi Digital
May 2017 – February 2024
• Completing support tickets to help fix bugs/add functionality in both frontend and backend areas for WordPress, Laravel and Drupal sites via Jira
• Collaborating with team members to develop functionality with websites as well as build websites in WordPress, Magento 2, Vue.js & Shopify
• Created a WordPress plugin for an Elementor Widget to make an onsite calculator. The widget included an animated bubble popping sequence that used CSS and Javascript
• Customising WordPress themes to add functionality
• Created WordPress site builds with ACF to make Gutenberg blocks and also used Elementor Site Builder. Website designs were created by the design department using Marvel and Figma
• Use of Github & Gitflow for website update tracking
• First exposure to Moodle LMS by building a WordPress & Moodle site
• Updated the company website built on Hubspot
• Technologies: Github, Jira, WordPress/Timber, WordPress/Elementor, Shopify, Liquid, Hubspot, SCSS, JQuery, Moodle and Magento 2.
SEO Executive – Coffeepot Digital
January 2014 – April 2017
• Local SEO techniques for ranking in Google Business verticals
• Keyword research & technical SEO
• Onsite/Offsite SEO
• Conversion Rate Optimisation in WordPress & Magento 1, for example in a ecommerce website for Bathroom TVs, A/B tested an original product page against a refined page to help with improving conversions.
• Technologies: Screaming Frog SEO, WordPress, Magento 1
Web Developer (Freelance) – Cube Creative
March 2013 – November 2013
• Made websites with in-house CMS utilising front end & back end development
• Technologies: PHP, HTML, CSS, Javascript & JQuery.
SEO Specialist – EBS Marketing
October 2011 – February 2013
• Onsite/Offsite SEO as per Net66
• First exposure & use of conversion rate optimisation (CRO) for example, on a pet ecommerce store product description page: updating the dog bed sizes from small, medium or large to “Fits a Yorkshire Terrier, Poodle & Daschund”. In another example, on a clothing website: In order to increase the USP of “Spend £50 for free shipping”, I coded the website to start counting down from a target price every time the customer pressed the add to cart button. This would display a message informing them of how close they were to that USP. This had the effect of consistently increasing overall sales.
• Use of front end development skills for technical SEO
Senior SEO Technician – Net66
March 2010 – August 2011
• Lead a small team for SEO
• Created locations pages using htaccess rewrites, regex and PHP (Programmatic SEO)
• Refined website content to control keywords for keyword prominence & devaluation using the SEOQuake tool
• General Onsite/Offsite SEO
• Social media updates & blog updates for the company/brand
• Old school link building (niche directories etc)
• CMS Knowledge (Joomla, WordPress, Drupal etc)
• Technologies: PHP, Regex, HTML, SEOmoz, SEOQuake
Front end Developer (XHTML/CSS) – Webasoft
August 2009
– Collaborating with the team to help develop Clubdb8 (now unavailable) using XHTML/CSS.
– Technologies: XHTML, CSS, ASP.NET
Website Development/SEO – MailSure IT
May 2009 – August 2009
Making necessary additions to the website and utilizing white hat search engine optimization techniques to increase MailSure’s ranking. Using Classic ASP/MS Access back-end to create more internal links for MailSure’s website.
