About Me
Thank you for visiting my about me page. This is just a rough draft of how I got into Web Development, please excuse any mistakes.
Well firstly let me start with who I am… I am Andrew Yates, a web developer based in the Solihull, UK. I am the Lead Web Developer at 383 Project Ltd in Birmingham, UK.
I started getting interested in designing websites when I was about 13. Starting off with (dare I say it) services like Geocities and other free website creation sites. Then I was privledged to be given some hosting with my neighbours company, the sites hosted on this server were created in FrontPage (I’m not proud of myself). That’s when ‘acynet’ was born. A site which included lots of mini-sites, each one related to a hobbie/interest of mine back then.
When I was around 14/15 years old I started moving away from FrontPage sites and started to get to grips with XHTML/CSS and more importantly the e107 theming system. Thanks to a guy called Brian I managed to firstly get my head around table based sites and not long after that I made the transition to tableless sites.
I was a dab hand at e107 and was invited to join the e107 Support Team. I spent many hours on the e107 forum helping people as well as other methods, such as Skype, email and MSN. I don’t get to do as much support nowadays but I do help the odd person every so often.
Christmas 2007 saw me creating lots of e107 themes to be related through my project ‘e107Advent’. Unfortunately due to work commitments in 2008 I was unable to bring e107Advent back for another year. It hasn’t gone i’m sure it will make a return one year! The e107Advent site will be moving across to my new hosting and the themes will be updated as a belated 2008 set of goodies. For now you may find the themes on e107Designs.
After a while I started getting freelance work for e107 themes, XHTML and Wordpress skins. I then started my transition to working on mainly Wordpress powered sites and still do to this day.
At New Year 2008 I bagged an interview at 383 Project, via Twitter (who said it wasn’t useful?). I came in and showed off my recent Wordpress work as well as my fresh e107Advent themes. I started on January 21st 2008, and have enjoyed it ever since. Working on mainly Wordpress sites like the old days, however the things these sites do still blow my mind compared to the ones I was creating before starting 383 Project.
You can often find me travelling between my home and the 383 Project office. When i’m not doing this i’m at home tinkering with the internet or enjoying time with my girlfriend Cassie, in Birmingham or a strangely named place called Angmering.