HELLO

I'm Joel

Freelance Web Developer & Web Designer

VIEW MY WORK

READ MY THOUGHTS

My most recent

PROJECTS

Toucan Green

2021

Will Code For Beer

2022

So anyway

WHO AM I

My name is Joel Beer, I'm a web developer & designer with 10+ years of experience building websites and I am currently living in Telford, UK.
From a young age, I have always been fascinated with technology which lead me to complete my Forensic & Digital Security Degree in 2013.

During my years at university, I fell in love with web development and the thrill of building something from scratch.

I landed my first junior role in web development as soon as I finished uni and have purposefully and passionately learned as much as I can about web development ever since.

what exactly

DO I KNOW

Over the past 10+ years, I have built up a vast array of programming and soft productivity-focused skills that have helped me progress both the companies I have worked for and my own processes.

Below you will find a glimpse of the skills I have learnt over the years.

Front End

HTML, CSS, Javascript, JQuery, Vue.js, Angular.js 1, SASS, Tailwind CSS

Back End

PHP, MYSQL, XML, JSON, Laravel, Laravel Nova

DevOps

Certbot, Puppet, Azure, Linode, Terraform, Kubernetes, Linode LKE, Azure AKS, Docker, Helm, Git

Misc

Notion, Trello, Jira, Monday.com, Scrum, Agile, Figma, Concrete 5 CMS, Wordpress CMS

A bit about

MY HISTORY

In 2017 I moved to ThirtyThree. Something about me just missed working on multiple clients in a fast-paced environment and boy has it been faced paced. In the past 2 years (at the time of writing this) I have learned so much and the time has flown!

I started the role in 2017 and have since been promoted to Senior web developer. My current role involves building careers websites for our variety of blue-chip clients, planning and researching internal products and taking leading roles in DevOps. I have had the privilege to work with some amazing people outside of the immediate web dev ecosphere such as web designers, art workers and copywriters. All of which have a pivotal role to play in the production of our websites.

Whilst at ThirtyThree I have been able to add many new skills to my personal stack. Including but not exclusive to:

Concrete 5 CMS
Craft CMS
Advanced Laravel concepts
Laravel Nova
Advanced SASS
The SAAS lifecycle
Web Design
Copywriting
Trello
Notion
Project planning
Terraform ( Azure VM & Kubernetes )
Azure Portal
Kubernetes
Docker
Helm
Puppet
YAML

In the past few years, of working at ThirtyThree the best lesson I have learned is that self-organization allows for a stress-free and creative mind. Regardless of the deadlines and multitude of complex live projects. Having the right processes in place can help you handle anything.

After 2 years at MFI, I moved across the country to Bristol and joined a smaller team of 4 (including me) at I-escape.

It was an exciting time for the company. I had joined only a few months into the development of their new website. Joining so early on meant that I could really put my stamp on the site. I took on the task of building their search engine. New to Laravel and Angular.js at the time it really threw me in at the deep end.

After a few months, the new site was live and the team and I went to work on writing proposals for new features that would improve the website experience. We started a UX team and went to work.

Alongside the constant improvements to the website we also started a rebuild of the internal “Admin” site. An internal tool which served as a custom CMS for the front end external site.The team and I started the rebuild and had already migrated some core systems over by the time I left the company in 2017.

Having the freedom to think and speak freely within our team lent itself to a fun and energetic environment. This is probably my main takeaway from working and Iescape. Freedom to speak and a fun environment breeds creativity in both front and back end development.

The tech stack included:

Laravel
PHP
JS
HTML
CSS
MYSQL
SASS
GULP
Laravel Mix
Angular 1
Mail gun
Agile/ Scrum

Fresh out of De Montfort uni I landed my first web development role as a Junior Web Developer at MarketForce Information (MFI). It was here I learned that uni is a great starting point but nothing can prepare you for the fast-paced agency life. I learnt a lot about the basic PHP web development stack at DMU but it was whilst working at MFI I learned HOW to code. learning how to process and break down problems from my seniors. My hard work was recognised and I was promoted to Mid-weight Developer withing 9 months.

This meant I also had the opportunity to teach a few juniors our systems and further solidify my knowledge of the custom framework and web dev stack.

During my time at MFI, I was responsible for onboarding clients, building dynamic statistic dashboards, improving the internal tooling and building customer and employee satisfaction surveys for some big household names, such as Frankie and Benny’s, Hugo Boss, Greene King Pubs and many others.

The tech stack included: