How I became a WordPress web developer

How did I end up as a web developer in Edinburgh? Well, after the usual, predictably-doomed spell of attempting to become a rock-star in the late 80s / early 90s (although we did get two NME Singles of the Week, the riches never followed) and tiring of dead-end jobs and living on soy sauce sandwiches (recipe here) I tidied my hair a bit, chose a shirt that didn’t smell of pubs (and soy sauce), and made my way into Edinburgh’s Job Centre on Torphichen Street for one of my regular “restart” interviews. These were normally depressing affairs, facing a disinterested Job Centre employee more concerned with their next fag-break than what I was going to do with the rest of my life, but on this particular day in the mid 90s things were different, and I wish I could remember the woman’s name on the other side of the desk as she basically set me on the career path I’m still pursuing, almost 30 years later. So thank you for that, whoever you were!

“Have you heard of the internet?” she asked.

I had. There were a couple of “Cyber Cafes” in Edinburgh already and I’d seen some stuff on the news about the brave new world of the information superhighway. Plus I was a bit of a nerd.

“Aye. I mean, yes, I have.”

“Well there’s a wee course I could put you on. Do you think you’d be interested in learning how to build websites and maybe become a web designer?”

I hadn’t really thought about it, but it sounded interesting. Plus, if I said no there was a chance they’d stop my fortnightly giro, so I said. “Sound good aye. I mean, yes.”

Baby steps as a web developer

The following week I attended, along with 2 or 3 other career-adverse types, a small internet cafe where we were given printed out sheets of instructions and sat down at beige PCs for five days of learning how to put together a rudimentary website. I found it pretty easy (before cementing my place in the annals of rock obscurity I’d worked as a programmer at RBS for a short stint). At the end of the week I’d built a site for Edinburgh’s Collective Gallery (this is not that site) on Cockburn Street – another place I’d briefly worked, as part of an earlier back-to-work scheme. It was nothing fancy, just a few pages of information with some photos of previous exhibitions, but the fact it ended up being hosted on the web cafe’s servers and was available for the entire world to view gave me a small thrill.

Onwards and upwards

And that was that, from small acorns etc. I ended up doing a post-graduate certificate in Multimedia at Napier University, then after a couple of freelance web developer jobs (early sites for the Edinburgh Film Festival and Scottish Chamber Orchestra) I found myself working for a technical publications company in Leith who’d managed to land a UK government contract, and spent a year putting England’s roadwork schedules and reports onto the Department of Transport’s website. This even won a New Statesman award as the “Best Public Policy Website” that year (I can only imagine there wasn’t much competition). Then FLASH happened. That was a gamechanger. All of a sudden websites didn’t have to be static. Animation and interaction became THE BIG THING. In my wisdom I developed an interactive tool showing England’s road network on a clickable, zoomable map, and spent another year updating it with the weekly roadworks. A bonus of this sometimes (always) monotonous work was that I could tell you the routes of every A road and Motorway in England but unfortunately I never found a way to monetise this knowledge.

The company grew, and in an exciting development I was whisked off to Houston Texas to assist with setting up one of the first MP3 download sites. It’s hard to imagine in the days of streaming media how massive this was. It completely pulled the rug out from under the traditional model of music distribution. Now you could download a song in a matter of minutes! This was wild. We sat and discussed how if they could make storage devices smaller it might even be possible to carry your entire music collection around on a small device like a walkman. I can only assume Steve Jobs was listening at the window.

Inspired by this, on returning home to Edinburgh I set up a music download site for unsigned artists which somehow attracted the interest of the mighty Pearson Group, but the suitcase of cash never arrived, and the dotcom bubble burst shortly afterwards.

Good times, bad times…

Moving on, I spent 6 years at Edinburgh web design agency Run Deep working as a web developer, which was a fantastic place to work. We developed lots of award-winning sites and eventually were consumed by a rival Glasgow firm; at which point it became an awful place to work. So I left in 2006 and started out on my freelance career, which is where I am now. As an established web designer in East Lothian, I’m still coding. Still enjoying it. Still learning. This site, for example, uses WordPress’s latest development “Block Patterns” which gives the developer the ability to create re-usable content areas. It’s quite powerful, and – as is always the case with WordPress – very easy to learn (for more on Block Patterns click here).

Anyway, that’s the story so far. If you’d like to be part of the story-yet-to-be, just get in touch.

Skills: HTML; CSS; PHP; MySQL; JavaScript; JQuery; WordPress Theme Development; WordPress Plugin Development; WooCommerce; Toolset Types; ACF; PSD to HTML; Copywriting; SEO; WordPress Consultancy.

Qualifications: PGCert Multimedia Design; Google Certified IT Support Professional.

Rate: £50ph (discounts available for charitable organisations).

Call 0778 625 6003 or use the form.