Greg D'Angelo

A highly reliable and motivated individual with an extensive programming background, including web and database design, IT support and project management. Passionate and adept at learn new techniques, skills, and technologies to improve my own talents and the talents to those around me.

Brickworks Communications

Marketing and Communications Agency

Senior Software/Web Developer

• Lead small development team
• Work on multiple client projects simultaneously under tight deadlines
• Web and database design and development using PHP, MySQL,S/HTML,ASP
• Custom WordPress plugin and theme development
• Write cross browser compliant HTML and CSS
• Mobile website design and development
• Design and slice Photoshop and Fireworks documents
• Advanced Google Analytics and Webmaster tools tracking
• Web performance analysis and updating
• Regular SEO checks and changes to sites
• Communicate with clients on a regular basis to ensure their needs are being met
• Online text, image and Flash ad creation and tracking

Simply Audiobooks

Audiobook Rentals and Downloads

Software Developer

• Web, database design and development using PHP, Javascript and MySQL
• Integrating system with third party APIs (ie PayPal Payflow Pro)
• Create and implement business and functional specifications
• Designed new merchandising system
• Server side installations and upgrades
• Engage with open source communities and software vendors to find new programs and support
• Provide support to team to resolve internal and external IT issues
• Co-chair of Health and Safety committee

Indigo Books & Music

Print, Gift, and Multimedia Retailer

Master Data Specialist

• Develop new tools to automate current processes
• Resolve complex data problems with involvement from multiple departments
• Ensure vendors clearly understand and adhere to the national standards as well as Indigo's requirements as they apply to the transfer of data
• Maintain regular contact and relations with vendors
• Report on, offer solutions for and troubleshoot data gaps and inconsistencies
• Design and develop easy to follow step by step documentation
• Liaise with various store locations and resolve data issues in a timely manner
• Create weekly and monthly reporting based on various data sets
• Provide technical assistance for Microsoft products and SAP
• Create new SQL queries for reporting and processing

Research

Before I put a pencil to paper I like to get some information about a web project. These are just a few options I consider:

• What's the end goal?
• Who is the target audience?
• What are competitors or similar sites doing?
• Will the site have frequent updates?

Sketch

No rulers, no grids just freeform drawings and scribbles.

This helps me play around with a design before I start and rule things out that just won't work.

Digital Design

This is where I jump into Fireworks or Photoshop.

HTML Mockup

Using the same Grid system I am able to quickly mockup pages into HTML. This prep work for the next step but really gets me thinking how the page should be created for best results in terms of rendering, speed, and SEO. If I know that the site might be viewed on a mobile device I take the appropriate steps to optimize it for smaller screens and browser cache.

CMS Theme creation

If the website is going to use a CMS I take my HTML mockups and work them into the CMS' templating system. At this stage I may sometimes go back and make minor adjustments to the design to account for anything that doesn't work as well in practice as it does in a mockup.

Browser Love

This is where I take care of browser specific problems and nuances. The majority of the time this is inclusively IE fixes. This also includes any CSS3 browser specific updates. Generally I code things first for Firefox then move onto Webkit based browsers and so on.

Google

By utilizing Event Tracking you can see if some of that cool javascript you added is even being used.

You can track downloads of PDFs, images and anything else and then find out how they got to the download by using Funnel Visualization.

There's a PHP version of analytics that you can use to track mobile devices. This is great for devices like older Blackberrys that have Javascript turned off by default.

Behavioural Targeting

You can use tools like BTBuckets to filter content to users based on things such as keywords that they used to find you website.

You can even roll your own targeting if you have the time.

CSS

You should always load this at the top of your page, if not, browsers like IE will display a white screen until all stylesheets are downloaded

Using a grid helps speed up the process as well as keeps things clean and consistent. Also just because you use a grid doesn't mean all your designs have to be square.

Javascript

Javascript is awesome but if your site(s) is used mostly by IE users you may want to limit how much you use it.

If you are not using a JS framework then you really should start. I'm using jQuery here but you could use Prototype, Mootools, Dojo, YUI even Google's Closure Tools.

If you try and keep all your Javascript at the bottom of your webpage it will load faster. You may also want to consider minifying, combining scripts and using a CDN.

Web UI

Design for the web is always changing and so you have to keep up with some of the latest ideas and technology, for example CSS3.

A DOCTYPE tag should precede your HTML tag to tell the browser how to render your webpage.

Pixlr

An advanced online image editor.

I used their chrome extension (Pixlr Grabber) to grab all of my screenshots and then did my editing and cropping on Pixlr.com

jQuery

I love using jQuery when it comes to editing the DOM. If you can write CSS then you can use jQuery and vice versa.

960 Grid System

Since I've started using this my development time has decreased significantly and my designs are looking cleaner than ever. I recommend checking out 960.gs if you haven't yet.