All things web development
Hello there! Welcome to my corner of the internet where I share my adventures in the world of web development.
I work primarily with PHP for the WordPress platform. Over the years I’ve built dozens of WordPress websites utilising bespoke, custom themes and plugins to elevate the platform to the next level.
Beyond WordPress, I’ve worked intimately with the Laravel framework to build bespoke, full-stack websites and production-level APIs for clients based throughout Europe and North America.
Before falling in love with PHP’s WordPress and Laravel frameworks, I worked with Python. Using Python, I’ve built web-scrapers, APIs and even developed some of my own Pypi packages for the whole Python community to use.
When I’m not writing code, I’m either walking my dog Benny, or firing up a new co-op game to play through with my amazing wife.
My Recent Projects
HermitClock
About the build This project was quite a fun one for me for a few reasons: It's my project, which is always exciting between projects for clients. It's a small project, so it was finished quickly without the risk of burnout. As I primarily work with brochure sites and...
Harwood Hypnotherapy
About the build As with thegmtim.ca, another website I've built recently for a small business, I used WordPress with the Divi theme. With the needs of the project, it was a priority to keep the build time reasonable, as well as ensure it's easy to alter in the future....
PrismPress Gutenberg block
As this website is primarily a web development blog and portfolio, I need to be able to display blocks of code to share with readers. While dozens of plugins are available on the WordPress plugin repo, none of them fit my exact requirements. I decided to build one myself so that I could utilise Prism.js, a lightweight…
jackwhitworth.com
As a web developer, having your own website is essential if you want to showcase your skills and abilities to potential future clients or employers. With that need comes an understandable pressure for your own website to reflect the quality of what you can create for someone else. This very website that you’re on right now is my own personal shop-front…
Recent Blog Posts
Using Google Analytics on my blog after 3 years
In my experience within the web development industry, Google Analytics is the go-to solution for monitoring the effectiveness of a website, and for optimising the content. Being able to audit and track not only the sources of your traffic but also the way...
Dnsmasq Domain Resolution with Docker Compose
Dnsmasq resolves a subtle, but real problem that becomes apparent when adopting Docker Compose as a LAMP stack. By allowing containers to resolve requests to each other with custom domain names, you can ensure that all containers can…
Local PHP development with Docker Compose
Introduction This post will cover how I host local copies of PHP websites running WordPress and Laravel with Docker Compose. This removes the need to install PHP, Composer, Nginx/Apache, MySQL, NPM/Node, etc locally on your host machine. I run my local...
Automatically update Pypi on GitHub release
Introduction This article will guide you through setting up a GitHub workflow that automatically updates your PYPI package upon a new GitHub release, using my zomboid_rcon repository as a practical example. Understanding the Workflow The process involves a...
My Work and Projects
I’ve put together a selection of my projects to share with you. While it’s far from the exhaustive list, it provides a nice snapshot into the variety and quality of the work I carry out.