Brian

Neck Deep in Code

So I've been building websites professionally since right before the Dot-Com bubble burst. Time has not been kind to my earlier work, HTML is transient, and when I started we didn't have CSS, or really any idea what we were doing. But now there are much better resources, a better roadmap for the profession and frankly just better sites to build. It's still just as terrifying staring at that blank page of possibilities, but the language of the web is more refined now. Where we once crawled the web, now we run.

Contact Me

Phone: (864)243-6939 
Email: brian@bdevore.com

 

Web Design Samples PDF Print E-mail

Current Work 

  • www.bdevore.com - Built in Joomla 1.5, mainly as an exercise in learning. I've implemented the Thickbox image gallery. I tried to use Rokbox, but without a dedicated server and access to the GD library and Imagemagick many of the excellent features available from the Joomla component are rendered useless. 

  • www.opensourcechannelalliance.com - I only had about a week before launch to transition from working on 1.0 to 1.5 and then build, test, and launch this site. Overall I'm happy with it, even if it looks like a typical Joomla site. I implemented the Community Builder component to control access, as the project lead wanted users to fill out a detailed profile before the user would get access to sensitive white papers. This was built at SYNNEX as a member of the SYNNEX Marcom team, with help from several other members of the team. 

Implementation

This is kind of an odd section, but though the past 3 years I've really been spending more time in the server room, setting up linux servers, and implementing open source solutions for various departments who need the functionality offered, but don't have the funds to pursue a commercial solution. And while I'm definitely no programmer or systems admin, I can speak enough of the language to be a bridge between the creative team and the technical team. I've implemented Joomla on several internal sites at SYNNEX, and have had to troubleshoot all of my own applications and modules. Probably the most interesting and useful thing I've set up was an instance of ResourceSpace to manage all of the digital assets for my department. The biggest hurdles were getting the GD, and Imagemagick libraries installed and configured. But now the department has a fully functional image and resource library available that automatically builds thumbnails and previews for the assets and allows for categories and tagging. It sure beats dumping everything into folders on the network.

Older work 

Many of the site's I've worked on prior to my current job are dead or have been replaced and are no longer my work. Below is a list of sites that I worked on or built prior to 2006.

  • www.montreat.edu
  • www.lbmc.com
  • www.bookmanbookwoman.com
  • www.stimsupply.com
  • www.theplasticsurgerycenterofnashville.com
  • www.cityofgoodlettsville.com
  • www.firstbaptisthendersonville.org
  • www.chocolatepenguin.com
  • www.finonline.org