Quick Links

Qualifications
My best portfolio piece
Agency Work
Freelance Work
JavaScript Work
Summary & Contact

Experience

RC Design / Full Stack WordPress Developer / 5 Years

Education

Humber College / Web Design & Development Certificate / 2017 – 2018

Humber College / Computer Programmer Diploma / 2014 – 2016

Seneca College / Digital Media Arts Diploma / 2011 – 2013

Dev Skillset

WordPress Custom Theme Development
PHP / HTML / CSS / SCSS / JavaScript / JQuery
Divi / Elementor
Object Oriented Programming
Bug Hunting
React / MERN Stack Development
AODA Compliance & Reporting
Website Maintenance
Website Deployment & Hosting

Soft Skillset

Time Management / Tracking
Client Communication
Documentation / SOP Writing
Google Suite

The Odyssey Framework

This website is my best and most up to date full stack web development portfolio piece.

It’s built on top of my custom WordPress parent theme, called “Odyssey” which provides structural styles, custom WordPress blocks, post types and other settings developed by me.

The child theme for this site extends functionality from Odyssey and adds it’s own layer of branding styles. It is aptly named “Jordan’s Odyssey”. See what I did there?

Explore the parent theme repository

Click below to view the code upon which this site’s theme was built. Includes the logic and  structural styles behind the custom Gutenberg / ACF blocks.

Odyssey Repository
Explore the repository for this site

Click below to view the code that runs this custom WordPress theme. A child theme which builds upon Odyssey with custom styles and templates.

Jordan's Odyssey Repository
View all blocks
Built on what I learned from RC Design

Utilizing what I learned from my work on RC Design’s Orange framework plus new ideas I picked up from the more senior developers I worked with, I combined a grew these skills to create my own mini version of Orange which I named Odyssey.

With nearly all of my prior web development experience being at an agency, on projects not owned by me, I found this to be the best way to show what I’m capable of on my own.

Features

Odyssey simplifies content entry by providing blocks that have the layouts I need to show my art and web projects, with simple HTML, secure PHP and minimalist styles, all based on the structural and style consistency of BootStrap 5.

Check out the Blocks page to see a full showcase of all the available blocks:

  • Slider
  • Content
  • Content Columns
  • Gallery
  • Image
  • Image Content
  • Posts
  • Video
Object Oriented Code

Blocks are developed with object oriented code, using PHP classes. All blocks inherit common functionality from an Abstract block class which adds:

  • Intro content: The content above the unique block area
  • Background colour
  • Background image
  • Full width layout toggle: Content stretches to the edge of the browser window
  • Anchor link: For linking directly to the block on a page
  • Block link: The button that shows below the unique block area

Add-ons

Odyssey is built with the help of external libraries and plugins:

Advanced Custom Fields Pro plugin
  • Block content inputs
  • Template inputs
  • Custom post type management
  • Theme options
Foobox plugin
  • Gallery block modal
Slick Slider
  • Slider block functionality
BootStrap
  • Mobile menu functionality
  • Site container
  • Responsive layouts
  • Breakpoints
  • Video block modal
  • Custom colour system
  • Font sizes

RC Design

With RC Design being my first career employer, most of my experience comes from projects I worked on with their dev team.  Below, I’ve outlined my most notable contributions to their projects.

RC Design

Children’s Aid Society (CAS)

Skills: WordPress, Reusable Code, Communication, Efficiency, Speed

Beginning with YRCAS, I led development on a website that would become the template for all future CAS websites. Shifting my approach to consider dynamic changes to typography styles, colours and custom header and footer layouts on future copies of this theme.

I also worked with designers to communicate areas of compromise to maximize efficiency. It was somewhat messy at first but eventually we refined the process to a development and QA phase turnaround of just 2 to 3 weeks per CAS project which was game changing for us and awarded RC Design the projects for 10+ other CAS websites. Below are just a few examples.

York Region CAS / Bruce Grey CFS / Durham CAS
RC Design

Horizons ETFs

Skills: Front end, BootStrap, Sliders, Readability, Templates, Organization, Security

Horizons was the biggest project I contributed to at RC Design. While I touched on countless aspects on this project, I’ll focus on  the Single Product template in this write-up.

Together with BootStrap, I wrote the vast majority of the HTML layouts and the styles for the Single Product template including elements like tooltips, tabs, accordions, modals, sliders, tags and downloads, all broken into sub templates for cleanliness.

Unfortunately Horizons had a change in management soon after launch and replaced our site with a new one but linked below is a scrollable showcase of the Single Product template on RC Design’s website.

Horizons RC Design Project Page
RC Design

Reena

Skills: Client Communication, Documentation, Efficiency, Solo Projects

Reena may have been my most familiar client at RC Design. I led development on all 3 of our projects with them as well as all client training meetings for these sites. They perfectly represent the majority of the projects on which I led development at RC Design:

  • An Orange project themed to a client’s branding
  • Custom home page sliders, headers and banners that make each site stand out from one another
  • Reusable code, copying and modifying elements from one site to another for efficient development
  • An example of our smallest, low budget projects (Chai Tikvah) to our more complex (Reena.org)
Reena.org / Reena 50th Anniversary / Chai Tikvah
Personal JavaScript Project

OneBill

After getting back on the job market, I realized I could boost my value by learning full stack JavaScript development so I decided to start with the MERN stack.

Skills: MongoDB, Express.js, React and Node.js
View the Code on Github

The Problem

This idea was born from a genuine annoyance of mine.

I spend most Friday and Saturday nights at my friends house where we order food for delivery from Uber Eats and Skip the Dishes and we chill and watch movies all night. It’s great.

We always order everything on one person’s account (it’s usually mine) and then that person is then responsible for reviewing the order, confirming what everyone ordered, adding up all prices, extra fees, calculating taxes and whatever discounts are applied, plus weighting, so I can tell everyone what they owe me – it’s a lot of tedious work.

The Solution

Enter the amounts, click a button, know what you’re owed.

So what this web app meant to do is make the process of calculating what everyone owes you much simpler by only requiring you to enter the names and amounts for all orders, fees, discounts and the tax rate, then automatically:

  1. It calculates the weight of each order
  2. Calculates the fees and discounts for the bill total and splits them based on each order’s weight
  3. Adds up each order’s subtotal and applies the tax rate
  4. Adds each order’s share of the fees and discounts to the order subtotals
  5. Displays a summary of all costs in a playful receipt-style interface with the amounts owed clearly visible and a button to confirm if the bill has been paid.

This app is still a work in progress

Although, enough of it is actually done that I am able to use it today.

I currently have all the server, API code and logic for the calculations working but bills can only be created through JSON data entry with Postman.

I also have the React front end working to pull the bill data from MongoDB and display it, and I am now developing the front end elements for the Create and Update Bill forms, plus the Delete Bill button, and in the future, I want to add User functionality.

I also know that React Native opens the potential for this to be a mobile app as well so there is just another opportunity for ongoing learning for me and OneBill.

I thought this would be a relatively quick and simple project but I’m always thinking of new things to add and make it more useful, so this is an ongoing project and it probably won’t be done for a few more months but I felt it was worth mentioning in my portfolio.

And that’s that

I am very eager to start working again and while I do like to experiment with different technologies, I find that the most effective way to learn is in the field, with real world clients, pressures and deadlines. I’m very comfortable with the basics of coding, I’m great with investigating solutions and I’m even better in a team.

So if I’ve convinced you of my abilities then I would love to hear from you. Contact me today and let’s get to work.

Contact Me