Personal details

Michael D.

Timezone: London (UTC+1)

Summary

My first job was a C programmer when Windows was still relatively new. My web development career started later when I discovered PHP and then Joomla. I joined the team of Virtuemart, one of Joomla's biggest extensions and a major force in e-commerce. After working with many clients, I moved to Drupal and Drupal commerce, and then due to demand, with Wordpress. I looked for ways to give clients faster sites, and that led me to static site generators (Hugo and Gatsby), and back to Wordpress as a headless CMS. I believe in this hybrid model of a React or Angular front-end and a CMS in the back-end, as well as techniques to maximise the speed of a traditional Wordpress site. I would like to share this and encourage new developers to focus on website performance.

Technical skills

Headless CMS・6 yrs

Personal Projects

High-converting E-commerce Websites with Drupal Commerce

2017

Drupal

Drupal Commerce

This encompasses multiple projects. Drupal Commerce has the advantage of being modular. Therefore it was easier to adapt to specific needs. With each site, I wanted to be sure conversion and sale rates were maximised (something easily missed in the planning and development stages). This meant easy and clear navigation, and a checkout process that encouraged the potential customer to complete the sale.

Fast-loading websites with Gatsby and Wordpress

2019

WordPress

React

Gatsby

Gatsby.js

RESTful API

Discovering the existing implementation of plugins that enabled Gatsby (based on React) to connect to Wordpress API was a fascinating. This covered two key elements of website development as a business; firstly client's requirements and secondly the importance of fast-loading websites. Many potential clients want to know they have control over their content. As a developer, I want the client to have a fast-loading website. Combing Gatsby with Wordpress as a headless CMS covers both bases, and I believe has an exciting future in web development.