Andrew Walsh

Things I have worked on include:

Glacier Country Tourism
  • Laravel Framework
  • PHP 7+
  • MySQL
  • Algolia Integration
  • Wordpress Integration
Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services
  • Organize vast wealth of content into a more concise and easy to navigate solution
  • Work with Cascade CMS to deliver highly customizable content solutions while maintaining cohesive style and layout
  • Redesign homepage, division landing pages, and internal pages to display relative information/alerts
  • Highlight differences between divisions and their jurasdictions in a manner that makes navigation and information easy to locatate
  • Cascade CMS
  • CSS3
  • JQuery
Historical Musuem at Fort Missoula
  • Various Department heads all had concerns to address, and call to actions they needed to be strong.
  • Redesign required integration with pre-existing donation system (Bloomerang)
  • Staff was most comfortable with wordpress, and required a good organizational strategy for a large amount of content, including digital access to over 30 boxes of antiqued files.
  • E-commerce solution for Annual event signups with limited spots for each half hour period during the event. UI to aid guests choose time slots, and see how many tickets were available.
  • Wordpress
  • Stripe
  • Bloomerang
  • Ajax
  • CSS3 Transitions
Yellowstone Country Toursim
  • Integration with the state of Montana's business directory.
  • Branded Google Map Functionality for airports, communities, and local businesses.
  • Dynamic homepage that changes based on season.
  • Custom Chatbot with specific knowledge about the area. Answers FAQ about the park, and helps directs web traffic to speicifc site pages.
  • Project completed during my time at Windfall
  • Laravel
  • PHP 7+
  • MySQL
  • Vue.js Trip Builder
  • Chatbot
  • Instant Search Using React + Algolia
  • Wordpress Integration
Missoula Art Museum
  • Redesign of old website.
  • E-commerce solution in laravel setting.
    • Must be secure (prices not changable through form manipulation, https, never databasing information, etc.)
    • Must work with their NMI account.
  • Host and organize a variety of content including
    • Classes
    • Events
    • Special Events
    • Exhibits (past, present, planned, traveling)
    • Merchandise
    • Memberships
    • Pages and more
  • Microsite for special exhibit
  • Laravel
  • Custom CMS
  • NMI API
  • Session Storage
  • PHP 7+
  • MySQL
Missoula Chamber of Commerce
  • Extremely dynamic custom CMS.
    • Allow users to select from a variety of custom components.
    • Content is easily changed and formated.
    • Multiple well organized content types.
    • On demand changes to lead forms for collecting varied information.
    • Secure.
  • Integration with weblink, their pre-exsisting member management software.
  • Cron Jobs for consistent up to date information about events + members.
  • Project completed during my time at Windfall
  • Laravel
  • PHP 7+
  • MySQL
  • XML
  • Weblink
  • Custom CMS

Internal Application Projects

Listing Database Manager

  • We had numerous websites that all utilized our local state business directory.
  • Clients, as well as concerned business owners, would often request we make changes to listings on various websites.
  • The state directory was often slow to update, and before this app, each listing would manually be changed.
  • When the state database did update, we had no uniform way of marking a listing as manually changed.
  • This app manages syncing with the state for each of our five regional areas, writing to seperate databases on seperate servers.
  • No longer a risk of overwritting the changes requested by clients or business owners.
  • Interface allows us to easily change listings.
    • Photo Upload to S3
    • Category Selection
    • General Information
    • Show Pages where the Listing Appears
  • All listings accross multiple servers and databases, all managed in one location.

Custom CMS

  • For a period of time we had numerous websites that required a cms, but also demanded either complex template systems or backend logic.
  • For awhile we used a laravel install for all front end and backend behavior, with a seperate wordpress subdomain to manage the content database.
    • This required us to deploy and upkeep security on two different websites.
    • Become relient on Corcel, an external laravel package that handled database logic for us.
    • Wordpress updates could be incompatable with Corcel, Corcel updates could be incompatible with wordpress version, laravel update meant waiting for corcel, etc.
    • Content structure on wordpress side did not always transition well to our templates.
    • Shortcodes/wordpress packages had to be implimented on the laravel side with custom code.
  • I built an internal laravel package that we could update with each laravel release, allowing us to simaltaniously upgrade and maintain every site using it.
  • CMS allowed for custom components, whose css reflected the same on the backend and frontend.
  • Utilized our internal base css framework, allowing for clients to control complex layouts complete with columns and components that could be switched around with drag and drop functionality.
  • Uses a seperate laravel authentication/guard system, leaving us free to use the default for visitors.
  • In short, has all the features of a typical CMS with the benefits of allowing us staple techniques in our preferred daily workflow.

Events Calendar

  • Our pre-existing events calendar was not user friendly
  • Clients were expanding their needs for events
  • Calendar wasn't smart enough to handle ongoing or repeating events in an apprehensible manner
  • Form validation made users able to correct wrong/missing information on save
  • Unnecessary fields hidden until needed
  • Backend logic created to handle duplicated, ongoing, recurring events
  • Featured images stored to S3 for use across all sites
  • Spotify integration for music events
  • 'Featured event' integration

Cronjob Manager

  • We had many cronjobs running on many different servers
  • Cronjobs had unclear descriptions of what they did
  • Adding, Scheduling, Editting new cron jobs made easy with a beautiful UI.
  • All jobs were now housed in a single place, with their log information, task description, last run times, and next run times readily available.
  • Connected to all our servers, pushing and pulling data as needed in a secure manner.

Other projects (in no particular order)

Destination Missoula - Missoula's Nonprofit Toursim Project Tomorrow - suicide awareness Missoula.live - Local Music Information Missoula Housing Authority Montanabudget.org - Policy Advocates Montana's Future - Coalition for Protected Public Investments Southeast Montana Tourism Aspire Fitness - Physical Therapy Enchanted Circle - New Mexico Tourism Bitterroot Trail Holt Heritage Musuem Krisco Liquor (maintenence, light features added) Rut Construction Carousel for Missoula - nonprofit Montana's Missouri River Country Tourism Flathead Basin Commission Mountain Line - Missoula Public Transportation Dragonfly Healing Solutions - Acupuncture Specialist Brock Healing Arts - Reiki Practitioner River City Roots Festival Salvage Signs Mostad Construction Territorial Landworks

Skillset of a Full Stack Developer

I can help you with whatever you need when it comes to web technologies. I have taken on all kinds of projects, and am always looking for a new challenge to add to my skills below.

  • Fluent in all standard full stack necessities and niceties.
  • Experience coordinating with third party services, and hooking into third party APIs.
  • Navigating client feedback and using it to further their ambitions for a complete web presence.
  • Building API's for use with other apps, both external and internal.
  • Ajax for pulling or pushing information without a page load
  • Balance user needs with client needs, which are at times not the same.
  • Wordpress Expert (Not the kind you see using a bunch of plugins or pre-existing templates, but an actual handwritten PHP native).
  • Worked with databases that have hundreds of thousands of records.
  • Created Single Page Applications (SPA)
  • SEO
  • CSS3 animations/transitions
  • Graphic design skills
  • Photo Editing
  • Security (learned both traditionally and the hard way)
  • Content editting/writing
  • Project collaboration through Asana, Github, and general clean code practices
  • Familiar with Vue, React, & Angular

A Piece of My Story

I began my career by helping small businesses in the Phoenix area put up simple websites. I was self taught at the time, learning what I needed to in order to provide clients with what they requested. I loved what I was doing so much, that I eventually decided to switch my major from application programing to web development. As my skillset grew, I saught more ambitious projects.

By the time I moved to Missoula, Montana I had a portfolio of work and a wealth of knowledge impressive enough to get a job in the field despite my lack of a degree. At Windfall, I was responsible for a variety of projects that helped me grow as a developer. I took on large scale tourism accounts with hundreds of pages of content. I worked with government funded sites with strict requirements and deliverables. I was responsible for maintaining and understanding code we inherited by contract from other developers (usually ranging from bad to worse as clients were unhappy with their past developers for good reason.) I also worked within the confines of pre-existing systems, taking what I liked about them and eventually building them into my own systems.

All these experiences culminated to the well rounded highly knowledgable developer I am today. I hope to continue the trend, learning more with each project and better serving as your web specialist.

For fun, I delve into video games and participate in their online communities. Sometimes I even get to take on interesting code challenges posted there, combining two of my hobbies. I shoot recurve bows, pamper my cat, and hang out with my girlfriend of 3 years at her equestrian events.

Although I live in Missoula, I still maintain relationships (and websites) for many of my original clients 1,184 miles away in Pheonix.