Veteran Web Design

Nuka Media is the portfolio of Andrew Stacy, a web development freelancer. Please take a look at some of my work and let me know how I can help you win the battle of establishing a web presence.

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Hi, my name is Andrew Stacy.

I’m a web developer by trade. I love creating beautiful, functional, and easy to use websites. I have been actively learning and participating in the world of web development for over a decade now and I don’t plan to stop anytime soon. I have much experience developing sites for small businesses located in the Dayton, Ohio region. I’ve also been employed full-time since 2011 at Sinclair Community College, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, and most recently ConnXus Inc.

If you are looking for an excellent website for your small business let my experience deliver exactly what you are looking for.

P.S. - I am not a military veteran, just a veteran of web development!

Web

Development

Skills

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To the left are a series of badges that represent the web development skills that I've acquired over the years. I am better developed with certain skills than with others, so please click on them to learn more about my experience with each.

HTML5 (+legacy)

3 years experience (+7yrs. legacy)

Around the beginning of my employment at Sinclair Community College HTML5 and CSS3 burst onto the scene (following the release of ie9). I began learning it and implementing it into all of my work at Sinclair and thereafter. I love how much cleaner it makes my code. I'm not sure what else can be said about it. HTML rulez d00d.

CSS3 (+legacy)

3 years experience (+6yrs. legacy)

I began learning CSS3 and it's wonders in 2011 while I worked at Sinclair Community College. I quickly adopted it. The amount of time it saves on applying effects really caught my attention. Around that time CSS3 and HTML5 had just become a hot topic with the release of ie9. I also began experimenting with Responsive Design at that time although its concept hadn't yet been fully realized. Prior to the release of CSS3 I had made extensive use of CSS1 and CSS2.x.

Javascript & Java

10 years experience

Javascript was actually the second "e;language"e; I had learned when I began programming. In high school I first got into programming by creating games on my TI-83+ calculator in study hall. My enjoyment of it led me to take basic and advanced placement programming courses in high school which began with HTML and JavaScript and worked up to Java. I also have some experience with Java consequently. Needless to say, I've been using Javascript since 2004.

jQuery 1.x

3 years experience

I first began writing my own jQuery in 2011 while employed at Sinclair Community College. It is such a terrific library. It saves me time on a daily basis. It even brews me coffee. Okay, I lied about the coffee thing. It's still great nonetheless. I use it in nearly all of my projects.

LESS

2 years experience

LESS is one of the most powerful front-end development tools I make use of. I honestly do not know how I got along without it in the past. This website was built not just on Bootstrap, but with Bootstrap's LESS source. My experience comes from a wide array of personal, freelance, and professional experience. I would consider myself an Advanced user of LESS.

Bootstrap

1 year of experience

Although I only have 1 year of experience with Bootstrap I would consider myself an Advanced user. This site was built on Bootstrap (if you couldn't already tell). When I was first employed by ConnXus Inc. our site had just relaunched as a new and improved version 4. Quickly I discovered how poorly it performed with mobile devices and so we began our journey of converting to a Bootstrap base. It's one thing to build a site from the ground up using Bootstrap, but to convert existing code to it forced me to delve deep into the framework and really get to know it.

PHP

8 years experience

PHP and I go way back. We're pretty much family. Nearly all of my dynamic website projects have made use of PHP whether it was with the Zend MVC Framework or WordPress. I have written a couple of custom content management systems for some small business clients and for a couple of personal websites. I would consider myself an Advanced user on the cusp of becoming an Expert. I also have a strong understanding of OOP concepts.

Zend MVC Framework

1 year of experience

All of my MVC experience and Zend experience comes from my employment with ConnXus Inc.. ConnXus.com is built on Zend Framework 1.11, Propel ORM, MySQL, Bootstrap, and hosted on Amazon Web Services. After using it daily for over a year I would consider myself an Intermediate user. I have a lot of learning still to go.

MySQL

8 years experience

Since I began learning PHP 8 years ago I had also began learning MySQL. It was my first dive into SQL. Ever since then it has been the primary SQL I have used in personal projects and work related. I do also have some minor experience with Oracle from school. I would consider myself an Intermediate MySQL user. I would prefer a "no-sql" solution to writing my own queries though.

WordPress

4 years experience

When it comes to WordPress it is usually my CMS of choice. I have experience building blogs, entertainment websites, and ecommerce websites with it. It is free, built on PHP, and has a huge support base which is why it garners so much praise from me. Granted, it has its flaws and drawbacks, but if you're skilled enough you can adapt it to most applications. I have experience creating custom templates, modifying premade templates, creating plugins (though it has been a while), and setting up ecommerce.

WooCommerce

< 1 year of experience

My experience with WooCommerce (an ecommerce plugin for WordPress) has been with building the online store for my T-Shirt company. I've found WooCommerece to be wonderful to work with. I've had my hands in every step of the process of the site build from templating to collecting payments. I also learned a lot about payment processing along the way.

Adobe Photoshop

8 years experience

I began teaching myself Adobe Photoshop a couple of years after I began learning and creating my own personal websites. I have taken courses in college on Photoshop as well. I would consider myself an Advanced user. All image creation, editing, and manipulation I have ever done has been with this software. It is indispensable to my web development toolkit.

Git / Github

1 year of experience

Believe it or not I had not used git before summer of 2013. When I was hired onto ConnXus Inc. I began to learn it and make use of it for our version control system. At my previous job with Oasis Systems LLC. as a government contractor I had used SVN, but had accrued minimal experience. My experience with Git and Github would qualify me as a novice, but I can accomplish most of the basic tasks involved with it (including merging).

Apple Products

3 years experience

I began regularly working with Apple products in 2011 when I landed my first professional Web Developer job at Sinclair Community College. I currently own a late 2009 Macbook Pro (8gb RAM, 120gb SSD upgrades) and an iMac (late 2012 upgraded to 16gb RAM). I prefer working with Apple products for web development, but I also have extensive experience using Windows (Win7 is preffered).

Amazon Web Services

< 1 year of experience

I recently began delving into the world of cloud architecture hosting and utilizing Amazon Web Services. My experience as a server administrator is just beginning and I definitely feel like a Novice. I am enjoying the process and all of the steps that go into creating a solid server system. My only experience is with my own personal web server hosting.