Wilk4: Website Development Experience

Here is an informal portfolio of the sites which I have worked, along with some explanation of my role and of the technologies used in each. For a summary of my background and what I can offer, see Website Design and Development.

Comments, questions or job offers are always welcome.
-- Jeff Wilkinson

Hortico Nurseries Inc.
Web Developer, Webmaster - (www.hortico.com)
August 1997 - Present

I co-developed an E-commerce web site for one of the world's largest producers of live roses. Hortico has an unusually large variety of products, including approximately 1400 roses alone. The site was designed to work with the partially automated back office systems of the company.

The technologies involved include the use of Active Server Pages (ASP) to interface to a Microsoft Access relational database thereby providing a fully searchable, browse-able, maintainable catalog with shopping cart and online ordering.

An extensive back-end interface provides order retrieval and full web-based maintenance and control of the product and order database for the office personnel without the need for web development training.

Design goals of this site included the need to support a wide variety of browsers and to provide a simplified maintenance interface for the office staff. The maintenance interface had to be comprehensive, but usable with minimal training.

It is a successful site and is quite well-regarded by its users. (based upon traffic and their feedback)

I continue to maintain and improve the Hortico site, adding functionality, locating, editing and adding information and photos, publicizing the site, etc. Jim Conallen no longer participates in its development.

Recent improvements include a visual design update, a horizontal navigation bar and the addition of Perennials.

Hortico's site and my development work on it was featured as a Site Spotlight on the Allaire Homesite Developer Center (6/26/98 - 7/10/98).

Central Presbyterian Church, Baltimore, MD
Web Developer, Webmaster - (www.centralpc.org)
August 1996 - Present

I head a small team that jointly created and maintains CPC's site, as a hobby and as a ministry. It was started in August 1996 and has grown and prospered since (currently over 1400 HTML pages). It currently averages over 4300 page hits/day. (2006) Central's site has also won several minor awards for quality Christian websites and typically ranks very well in search engines.

This site is mostly static but it has some dynamic content in the ASP guestbooks, and in the calendar which use custom client-side javascript.

We've been integrating use of smugmug photo galleries into the site to provide galleries as well as photo share space that can be used and managed by a variety of people, not just a webmaster. (discussion)

Sermons are published as transcripts but also as audio MP3's with podcast support.

Note also the CPC Website Ministry FAQ, a popular resource I've written giving information and advice for developing church and ministry websites.

Brassica Protection Products LLC
Web Developer, Webmaster - (www.brassica.com)
December 1999 - Present

Brassica contracted me to design and develop their company site and to coordinate it with other product sites they have. This site uses an attractive and functional design, with DHTML pulldown menus for main navigation, backed by basic html links of course. ASP database-driven functions provide ease of customer maintenance for the science paper list, press coverage list, and for site news.

Back-end database administration and maintenance is done by their staff using a generic db admin package I installed.

Last major visual redesign was in fall 2005.

I'm also responsible for design, integration and maintenance of other BPP sites including BroccoSprouts.com.

BroccoSprouts
Web Developer, Webmaster - (www.broccosprouts.com)
December 1999 - Present

As part of my contract with Brassica Protection Products I've designed, maintained and redesigned this product site. BroccoSprouts uses an attractive and functional design, DHTML pulldown menus for main navigation and ASP database-driven functions for store and grower locator/lookup and news.

Back-end database administration and maintenance is done by their staff using a generic db admin package I installed.

The current (4/2006) visual design was created by Visionmark Communications, while I did the development and programming, and making it actually work in HTML/CSS/DHTML, with a flexible layout. (prior design)

Brassica Teas with SGS
Web Developer, Webmaster - (www.brassicatea.com)
September 2002 - 2006

As part of my contract with Brassica Protection Products I designed this new product site. Brassica Teas uses a design similar to Broccosprouts with DHTML pulldown menus for main navigation and ASP database-driven functions for store locator/lookup and for requesting free sample requests.

Back-end database administration and maintenance is done by their staff using a generic db admin package I installed.

Currently another developer is handling this site, using a new design and backend.

Fretboard Fellowship
Web Developer - (www.fretboardfellowship.com)
December 1999 - Present

While I am not responsible for the original design, I've improved, expanded and maintain this ecommerce site. The site is frame-based and uses a PHP shopping cart and ordering system with a simple database backend for order retrieval and product data editing.

Cassandra Bailey, Realtor
Web Developer, Webmaster - (www.CassandraBailey.com, www.CassandraSells.com)
May 2002 - Present

I designed this site for a Real Estate Agent, Cassandra Bailey. It is a simple, mostly static site, but carefully designed for a professional, yet friendly look.

The only dynamic functionality is an ASP, database-generated listings page with maintenance via a generic database admin package so that the client can edit the listing data herself.

Larry Jones Illustration
Web Developer, Webmaster - (www.larryjonesillustration.com)
April 2004 - Present

A new business portfolio site for a great artist and illustrator.

So far the site's dynamic features include the image viewer page and image upload admin functions. Eventually the client will be able to fully upload and manage all the images and thumbnails on the site.

ASP4HS: ASP/PHP/.Net Development Extensions for HomeSite
Web Developer, Webmaster - (www.wilk4.com/asp4hs/)
October 1999 - Present

I created and maintain this small site as a resource for the webdeveloper community. It is a collection and exchange point for resources, add-on's and information to support the use of the HomeSite HTML Editor for ASP, PHP and ASP.Net development.

Head Huggers
Web Developer, Webmaster - (www.headhuggers.org)
January 2002 - Present

HeadHuggers is another simple, yet attractive site designed as a favor for my aunt to support this project.

Initially surprising to me, this site gets a *lot* of traffic, averaging around 4500 page-hits/day, up to 8400/day during peak season each November-January. (stats from 2006)

Ask anyone you know who knits or crochets if they know of HeadHuggers. Chances are they do. This simple project started by one (admittedly impressive) retired lady has become a network of groups of volunteers who seem very eager to find such a way to use their skills to help others. (To be clear, I'm *not* taking any credit for that. I'm just a webmaster watching something impressive. ;-)

The only dynamic functionality is the guestbook and an ASP, database-generated groups listing page with maintenance via a generic database admin package so that the client can edit the listing data herself.

NotGNU Emacs Editor
Web Developer, Webmaster - (www.notgnu.org)
1998 - Present

I created and maintain this small site as a favor for the author of the NotGNU editor. It is a nice example of good functionality in just a few pages at basically no cost. It uses a free webhost, announcements email list manager, and guestbook. The author can post updates just by ftp'ing the files to the site without having to know any HTML.

FoMRG: Friends of Marie and Ralph Green
Web Developer, Webmaster - (www.wilk4.com/marie/)
July 2001 - Present

FoMRG is a simple, yet attractive site designed as a favor for a friend of our family. It is static except for the ASP guestbook.

Site was taken down 2/2007