About Me

Hi, I’m Will and you’re on my website. I’m a 21 year old New Media Graduate and a passionate heavy metal fan.

Since about the age of 11, the idea of having a website has fascinated me. Starting out by building a website for my fantasy wrestling organisation using Geocities and proudly displaying my 50 strong hit counter, I got hooked. This led to me teaching myself HTML, PHP with MySQL, CSS (it took me ages to get used to not using tables, now I feel dirty even using them for tabular data!), Photoshop and many more essential web design components. I’ve always liked the idea that I can create something and easily release it to the world for complete strangers to enjoy. I attempted the guitar (and still sloppily attempt to play it…), but it seems that web design and development are where my creativity flourishes.

I got my first real taste for commitment to a website when I ran Rattlehead HQ, a fan site for my ultimate favourite band, Megadeth. Updating every time any of Megadeth took a step, I managed to creep my way onto the first page of Google, sometimes achieving up to 20,000 visits in a month. Running Rattlehead HQ really spurred my learning, as it gave me an outlet to try new things. I experimented with Flash widgets, MySpace contact boxes (the early days of social networking), email newsletters and many more attempts to keep bringing traffic back to my doors. I unfortunately had to stop running the site when my real workload became fairly heavy and I’ve since removed it for fear of hosting out of date information. Scraps of it are available on the Internet Wayback Machine though.

Working as a part time web developer for Parkmatic Publications LTD on their family of rental property websites for the past 5 years – I’ve gained measurable experience in PHP development used by over 100,000 people a month. In addition to the wonderful experience I’ve gained working for Tom Entwistle of Parkmatic, I’ve enjoyed many a frothy coffee and ham butty courtesy of Tom’s wonderful wife Gaynor and I’ll be eternally grateful to the pair of them for their gracious tolerance of my heavy metal and often questionable t shirts.

I followed the traditional English conveyor belt of education, from the wonders of Woodhey High School, onto the prestige of Holy Cross College and finishing with the grandeur of the University of Leeds. Aiming to choose a degree that I felt combined all of my interests, skills and A Levels (English Language, Media Studies and Computing) – I found myself on the excellent New Media Bachelor of Arts (with honours) course from the Institute of Communications Studies.

Fast forward 3 years later, I emerged from the New Media course with a 1st Class honours degree and a couple of extra stones on my luscious torso. My final year project was a website called “Pay Face Value” – an ethical ticket trading website (developed from scratch, both front end and back). The website can be found here and I hope to spend some time driving traffic to it soon. Modules in which I excelled on the course pertained to database development, accessibility and front-end development. This led me to being employed by the university to tutor workshops for the “Creating Database Applications for the Web” level 2 module and the “Interface Design” level 1 module. Additional skills I gained from the course included developing New Media strategy outlines, project planning and working in teams.

I’m currently seeking full time employment in London, with eyes to learn more about the digital realm within a business environment (preferably entertainment based). I’m also handling a couple of freelance projects and still working for Parkmatic Publications LTD.

If you have any questions or enquiries, I’d love to hear from you and you can email me using the contact section.