Jack Sowden - Freelance web developer
based in Hull, East Yorkshire.

PHP, jQuery, HTML5, CSS3, API's, working hard!

Hello, I am a freelance front end / back end developer with around 5 years full time industry experience. During this time I have worked full time for a number of Hull based Web Design agencies. I graduated from the Hull School of Art and Design in 2009 with a First Class Honors Degree in Web Design.

I use this simple website to display my most recent projects and document what I am currently up to in my blog. Most of my work is done alongside other companies, however I am happy to take projects on or share them with the current companies I work for. If you have a business enquiry please feel free to drop me a email, hello@sowdendigital.co.uk.

Some of my most recent work....

Chrispins Car Spares Responsive OpenCart Store

I created this responsive OpenCart store, which automatically feeds products and categories from eBay. It was important that all products that were added to eBay via Turbo Lister, this automatically syncs with the new OpenCart store with minimal user input.

After lots of research I found a way of achieving this with an OpenCart extension.

The client was extremely happy with the finished website and I have now started working on their Social Media and Search Engine Optimisation.

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Digital Fishing Limited

This is a personal project of mine, which has just been launched as a registered limited company. The company is aimed at businesses in the pleasure fishing industry offering a full range of digital services.

The company has also been created to manage and create a number of fishing related websites my business partner and myself have ideas for.

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Carp Fishing Blog

I recently created this WordPress based Carp Fishing blogging website which allows the contributor the chance to blog about their fishing and review products.

I used to be a keen blogger so I am hoping owning a website like this will get me back into this in the near future. Well that’s the idea!

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Love Website Hosting

To help me sell my website hosting and content update services I have developed this simple WordPress based website. I had limited time to develop it so I chose to source a premium theme and spent what time I had writing content for it.

After the site was launched it started getting organic visitors for relevant search queries almost instantly. Over the coming months I will be adding further content and design elements and hope to have the site fully functional by April.

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Wise Owl Private Day Nursery

I designed and developed this website which is built on my Content Management System. One of the challenging parts of this project was ensuring over 10 web cams could be viewed via the website. These web cams are on password-protected pages and give parents the chance to see their children.

The client was extremely happy with the finished website and they can now easily keep the site up to date via the Management System.

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Fishery Network redeveloped

This is a personal project of mine, which I started in my last year of university. I designed and developed the site, which gives anglers and fishery owners the opportunity to share information about places you can go fishing. Google maps plays a big part in the website and some of the location features where original when I first published the site.

I have recently redeveloped the site and have plans for lots of new features, which I will introduce during the rest of 2013. Since the re-launch of the newly developed site the visitor numbers have dramatically increased.

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KoziKidz store locator & website

Whilst working with Glo Design I developed a new responsive website for an outdoor children’s clothing company. I also developed an interactive store locator which has a PHP / MYSQL backend to manage store locations.

Feedback gathered from users of the new site and the client has been extremely positive. The site works really well on devices of all different screen sizes.

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HERAM website & forum

This was one of my very first clients when I left university. I have recently re designed and developed their website and built it into WordPress. The client was very happy with the new site and have received great feedback from their users.

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Selection of recent OpenCart online shops

Carrying on the trend from 2012 I have been involved in many OpenCart projects. Please see a selection of these below and if you have an OpenCart project you would like a hand with please get in touch.

Visit Project 1 - Visit Project 2 - Visit Project 3

The Tortoise Shop

I designed & developed a new OpenCart based online shop for The Tortoise Shop. They already had a good customer base and have been trading online for many years. It was important that we could migrate as much data from the old shop without any downtime or disturbance when we put the new site live. The client was extremely happy with the finished website and we are now working together on a regular basis.

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FunMeFit community-based BuddyPress website

I developed this website whilst working for Sheffield based company Foster & Scott. We had to cerate a free online community-based website that helps people find ways to be more active whilst having fun with their familys. We decided that WordPress / Buddy Press would be the best way to achieve this whilst keeping the cost down. The website was a success with hundreds of people registering and interacting with it regularly. We are now working with FunMeFit to develop the site further over 2013.

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A selection of recent budget websites

I realise that some people don’t have big budgets to spend on their websites. For this reason I can happily create websites starting from as little as £200.

Visit Project 1 - Visit Project 2 - Visit Project 3 - Visit Project 4

A selection of recent OpenCart projects

Over 2012 I worked on many OpenCart projects for a number of different companies I work on a freelance basis. I have really got into Opencart development and will confidently work on current websites or create them from scratch.

Visit Project 1 - Visit Project 2 - Visit Project 3 - Visit Project 4

A selection of recent WordPress projects

I am regularly involved on Wordpress projects and have developed an in depth understanding of this Open source blog & website platform. Below are some recent examples of sites I have developed whilst working for different companies I work for on a freelance basis. I have worked on many more sites often offering services such as bug fixing and general maintenance & updates.

Visit Project 1 - Visit Project 2 - Visit Project 3 - Visit Project 4

Beverley Ski Tuning

This was only a small job but made a nice change as I got the opportunity to design it and the client was extremely happy with it. The site was at the top of Google within 4 hours of launch for search terms, which the client had requested.

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Try Number plate on car

Whilst working for Eye Web Solutions I developed this page where users of the site could upload photos of their car and try different number plates on it. This was pretty challenging and required some rather tricky jQuery, Ajax and PHP image generation.

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VW Festival web base ticket system

I have just finished producing a web based ticketing system which utilises PHP genrated Barcodes and plugs into both PayPal and SagePay API's. I have also created a desktop based app for checking these tickets on the day of an event.

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Eye Web meet the team page

I currently work for Eye Web Solutions where I was given the task of coding their new website. Each page of the site was a challenge with lots of interaction and challenging design elements. The highlight of the site for me was the 'Meet The Team' page. This involved many hours of experimenting with jQuery!

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E-commerce Sites

Over the past year I have been involved in a number of different E-commerce projects. I have learnt OpenCart thoroughly and have also developed many modifications for the opensource platform. Below are three links to recent e-commerce projects.

Visit Project 1 - Visit Project 2 - Visit Project 3

Back end PHP based systems

I have created and worked on many PHP based backend management systems. I am unable to give links out to these but they include;

Website Content Management Systems

Document Management Systems

Advanced User Management Systems