About me

My name is Andrej and coding is one of my greatest passions

Coding

When I was very young, my family owned an Atari 800XL console and a book that included code for writing games for it. This inspired me to pursue coding as my hobby and I wanted to learn as much as I could so that someday I can create my own games from scratch

Web Developer

During my college years, I had several coops and internships where I worked with languages such as Cold Fusion, Flash.

After I graduated, I did two contracts for the Guelph Public Library.

The first 8 month contract involved creating a brand new website for the Library. Back then, the technology I was given was a bit primitive but I did what I could. The library used ColdFusion on the back end and DreamWeaver for coding. I created the site using DreamWeaver templates which for the time did the job. I decided to implement my knowledge of XML and XSLT pages to create a database like XML file that was used to generate the top menu, side menu as well as a site map, using a different XSLT page for each.

The second 4 month contract involved developing a smaller site called the Robert Munsch portal. This portal listed most of his books and I also built a back end that would easily allow the editor to add new books and write something about them. I also built an interactive map of Canada that would show all the places where Robert Munsch had an influence. This map had a custom back end form, that allowed the editor to add new images, drag and drop them into the map, and add text about each new item.

After the Library, I managed to land a full time job at the WE Charity, which was back then called Free The Children.
Here is where I developed my skills in object oriented PHP as well as WordPress and building marketing and promotional emails.

My first project was updating the trips Portal, used for sending people abroad where the charity was helping out. It used a custom built PHP framework that was fairly easy to work with. It used MySQL to store traveller checklists, which also worked as email reminders. I upgraded the email system and made it easier to test and update. After I was finished with the Portal, I worked on the WordPress sites by updating the templates and building new pages that were responsive.

My next major task was building marketing and promotional emails using Pardot, that promoted ME to WE trips, activities, store sales, and WE Day announcements.

After WE Charity, I worked at ITS Dispatch where I once again worked with a custom PHP framework to update a site used for managing freight, delivery troutes, driver salaries, and most things related

Eventually I redesigned and relaunched this site with my custom built WordPress theme.