As the IT director at the Difford’s Guide (Odd Firm of Sin LTD) I am responsible for all aspects of IT, which includes building the Production Engineer team (geek recruiting, project management, KIPs etc), office management (CIS 5 to CIS 20), our websites written in PHP and mod Perl, mobile apps, systems administration, cyber security, network architecture largely in the cloud (AWS) and our internal servers/workstations. Other roles include but are not limited to technical sales, research and… Show more As the IT director at the Difford’s Guide (Odd Firm of Sin LTD) I am responsible for all aspects of IT, which includes building the Production Engineer team (geek recruiting, project management, KIPs etc), office management (CIS 5 to CIS 20), our websites written in PHP and mod Perl, mobile apps, systems administration, cyber security, network architecture largely in the cloud (AWS) and our internal servers/workstations. Other roles include but are not limited to technical sales, research and corporate strategy.Everything changes… so we must adapt! As new cool techniques and strategies get developed we will try to implement them - a prime example of this is most recently re-building the frontend servers into a Dockerized environment with automated testing using web browser drivers which report errors (along with screenshots) automatically when a developer pushes their code and introducing a policy that every reported frontend bug must have a failing test created first so it can never happen again.diffordsguide.com is aimed at discerning drinkers and is one of the world’s largest and most-visited drinks-related websites with over 3.6 million monthly page views.The diffordsguide brand was first established in 2001 by Simon Difford, and in addition to the website, we also publish a series of drinks-related guide books under the diffordsguide brand name, with ‘diffordsguide Cocktails’, now in its tenth edition, the best known.In addition, we also utilise our in-house writers, editors, photographers and graphic designers to contract-publish bespoke print and digital publications and websites for the world’s largest drinks companies and we have produced books for Diageo and Pernod-Ricard. Show less

From time to time I get the opportunity to work with high profile clients from all over the world as a troubleshooter when their internal teams have come up blank.These contracts can be anything from coding problems to cyber security concerns (including breaches) and production environment instabilities. I also commonly support their teams with penetration testing and task automation and multilingual (href-lang) implementations.

My love of darts led me to start writing the Darts Score Keeper software (now UniScore) to help any and all players get more out of the game which in-turn gave me the fortunate experience of meeting Unicorn and working with them to further improve my work.This website http://uniscore.unicorn-darts.com is now been running for over six years and has achieved so much, now having has over 61.5 million darts tracked using the software!

My role as an IT specialist was to develop their hardware and software infrastructure for Quintessentiallys global business. This involved everything from phone systems, load balancing, purchasing, IT strategy, IT human resources, interviewing, team management and website development.Quintessentially is a private members' club with a 24-hour global concierge service. With offices in almost every major destination and thousands of suppliers worldwide, Quintessentially can hand you the… Show more My role as an IT specialist was to develop their hardware and software infrastructure for Quintessentiallys global business. This involved everything from phone systems, load balancing, purchasing, IT strategy, IT human resources, interviewing, team management and website development.Quintessentially is a private members' club with a 24-hour global concierge service. With offices in almost every major destination and thousands of suppliers worldwide, Quintessentially can hand you the virtual keys to any city. Whether it be travel, music, art, food, drink, hotels, clubs, spas, restaurants, tickets or - most particularly - service, a Quintessentially membership is your passport to the very best that life has to offer. No matter where you are in the world, Quintessentially is here to help with all your needs, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, however extraordinary or difficult they may be. Show less

My role was to develop the back-end code for the Daily.co.uk infrastructure along with building the hardware environment with my manager from the bottom up, the maintain and expand these systems.Infrastructure included: Email platform (with anti virus and anti spam), Shared Web Hosting, Domain registration and management (all major TLDs), Internal Systems, Payment Systems, VPS, Datacenter operations, All written in mod_perl on a Linux platform.My profile on Daily.co.uk's… Show more My role was to develop the back-end code for the Daily.co.uk infrastructure along with building the hardware environment with my manager from the bottom up, the maintain and expand these systems.Infrastructure included: Email platform (with anti virus and anti spam), Shared Web Hosting, Domain registration and management (all major TLDs), Internal Systems, Payment Systems, VPS, Datacenter operations, All written in mod_perl on a Linux platform.My profile on Daily.co.uk's blog:Harry Webster, Research & Development: Our early bird coder, Harry is the member of the Dev team who gets up at the crack of dawn and joins the early Support shift in a darkened room – until I get in at half eight and switch the lights on! Integral to the launch of Daily, Harry applied a lot of the lessons learned with A Certain Other Web Hosting Company Which Used To Be Based in Nottingham to the development of Daily’s backend systems, with the result that we have some of the most efficient backend systems we’ve encountered. Show less

Working in a department called Product Development, our role is to develop/maintain the software running our external/internal systems and develop/maintain the server environment in which it stands.I specifically worked on projects such as 123-REG (sole developer for several years), WebFusion, Sales Order Processing (SOP), Internal Ticketing System (IWORs), Web Services System and Windows Shared Hosting (WiSH).