About Me

My name is Andrew Gatenby, and I build websites for a living - I know, it rocks!

I’m currently enjoying life living near the sea in the North-East of England, and working as an Integrations Web Developer at the award winning development agency VisualSoft.

In A Nutshell…

• Married, 27 years old, Leo
• Based in North East England
• Working as professional web developer since 2004
• Uses PHP, MySQL, XHTML, CSS, AJAX, Photoshop & Illustrator
• Likes: Web standards, open source software and 1980s films
• Dislikes: Clowns, Mac OSX (controversial I know, but I have my reasons!) and seafood

The Hard Sell…

I’ve been involved in professional website development since 2004, and have a proven track record in providing successful results for websites and e-commerce portals. If you’re after a full redesign, simpler website updates, or an improvement to your website then I can help!

My strong experience in both the design and programming involved in building any website, allows me to bridge the gaps between the artistic design phase and the techy development that makes the cogs of the website tick and whirr into action.

I’m skilled and experienced in PHP, XHTML, CSS, AJAX, MySQL and Javascript (I know all the buzz-words!), as well as applications such as Photoshop, Dreamweaver and Fireworks. The important thing is that I can use these skills to build usable websites that will give you a return on your investment.

On top of that, I know how to get the best out of any website with usability and accessibility improvements, as well as SEO improvements to enhance search engine rankings.

If you’re interested in speaking with my about contract or freelance work, then I’d suggest visiting Flow which is my business website.  As of November 2008, I will be unable to take on any freelance work unfortunately - this date coincides with me starting work at the award winning web development agency Visualsoft.

Employment History

I’ve been working as a web developer since early 2004 - almost at my 5 year anniversary as a professional geek!  I wonder if someone will present me with a binary carriage clock?!  Anyways, a little history….

November 2008-Present: Web Developer at Visualsoft
Having recently started at VisualSoft I’m still getting into the swing of things, but I will be working as a Web Developer helping code some cool new features and developing websites for clients nationwide.

January 2007 - November 2008: Web Developer and Development Project Leader at PointOV Limited
I joined PointOV as a Web Developer in early 2007 and worked primarily on their in-house e-commerce business called Ethical Superstore. Working as part of a small team of developers and designers, I was able to contribute a significant change in improving the Ethical Superstore site.

My work involved developing new features and tools to support the companies e-commerce operations, and ensuring that the websites run efficiently and remain available. An extensive list of SEO improvements saw organic search traffic for ethicalsuperstore.com rise by 300% in my first three months.

Bespoke development on the Ethical Superstore front end resulted in moving away from the original OS Commerce architecture, improving website load time, efficiency and improved user experience.  By targetting areas to improve, agreeing goals and implementing new methods to acheive these with high standards maintained throughout.

Personally, I was responsible for the front-end template build, a revised website search to allow customers to find products by keywords and filter their results by an improved navigation method that is mirrored across the website, as well as a much more streamlined checkout process.  I was also responsible for targetting poor website performance, and optimising code and database queries to improve availability.

As well as this there was all sorts of wonderful things that from tracking clicks in newsletters, improvements to support internal departments and a wide variety of client websites that are based on open-source content management systems including Wordpress, MODx and OS Commerce.

April 2004 - January 2007: Web Designer/Developer and Senior Web Developer, Mobile Fun
In my time working for Mobile Fun I was personally responsible for the development and maintenance of a bespoke ecommerce system that handled 1000+ orders each day, and helped the company grow to become part of the Tech Track Top 100 companies in 2006. The website included features such as promotional codes, referral tracking, dynamic contract phone deals and a number of innovative features covering SEO, product management and customer registration.

Will Code for Beer?

In addition to these roles, I have worked as a freelance web designer/developer for a number of years running my own business called Flow Studios.  This work covered a number of different areas - e-commerce, CMS sites, SEO consultation, bespoke website design - the whole spectrum!  A number of the websites developed in my freelancing days can be seen in my portfolio.

Please be aware that due to various circumstances, I am no longer taking on any more freelance work.

The Skoolin’

I attended the University of Teesside from 1999 until 2004 where I earned my 2:1 undergraduate award in BSc Visualisation, followed by my MA Creative Multimedia the following year.

“What about the site?!” I hear you cry!

This website is built in Wordpress using a Flickr and del.icio.us plugin for the footer.  I’ve tried to ensure that this site sticks to web standards as much as possible, and as such the content is served up as XHTML 1.0 compliant. The CSS used to make things look pretty minimalist also validates.

I have made efforts to test the website on as many modern browsers as possible, and have covered the browsers that account for 99% of web traffic, but if you are having any problems please let me know.