End-to-end website development as a freelancer, #1 freelancer in the category on FL.ru @ Freelance (FL.ru)
Full CV index — Tony Miasoedov
- Candidate: Tony Miasoedov, Senior Software Engineer
- Company: Freelance (FL.ru)
- Period: 2011-01 — 2013-01
- Role: Web Developer
- Team: 2 people — development (me) and design (my wife)
- Main result: Reached #1 in the turnkey website category on FL.ru, Russia's largest freelance marketplace, within a year; 20 five-star client reviews.
Context
Web development courses had just started to appear, and most companies still had no website. I took a web development course to learn how to build sites from scratch.
We worked as a team of two: me as the developer and my wife as the designer.
The sites varied widely: business card sites, online catalogs and online stores, including multilingual sites and sites with complex animations.
We had hands-on business experience, including working with suppliers, from Rainbow Smile, so we easily found common ground with clients and understood their needs.
What I did
- Chose Drupal as the CMS: its UI lets you create different page types and place blocks where needed, unlike WordPress, which depends on templates and a PHP developer.
- Used MySQL as the database: it integrates well with Drupal and stores data reliably.
- Built the front end with HTML, CSS and JavaScript for adaptive, interactive interfaces.
- Followed front-end best practices even then: a Gulp build for the markup, SCSS, and a mobile-first approach on every site.
- Besides development, connected online payments and deployed each site to hosting.
- Built every site so the client could fill it with content, grow it and manage its features on their own, without our constant help.
Results
- Within a year of starting in 2011, reached #1 in the turnkey website category on FL.ru, Russia's largest freelance marketplace.
- The profile still shows 20 real five-star reviews: FL.ru portfolio.
- What made the difference: speaking the client's language and taking every site all the way to production, so clients could update and run it themselves.
Stack & skills
- Drupal: Built client sites on Drupal, using its UI-configurable content types and block placement so clients could run the site without a developer.
- MySQL: Used MySQL as the database behind the Drupal sites.
- HTML: Hand-coded the markup of client sites from the designer's mockups.
- CSS: Built mobile-first adaptive layouts for client sites from the designer's mockups, using SCSS.
- JavaScript: Added interactive interface elements and complex animations to client sites.
- SCSS: Wrote client site styles in SCSS.
- Mobile-first: Built every client site mobile-first.
- Payment integration: Connected online payments for client online stores.
- Website deployment: Deployed client sites to hosting and launched them in production.
- Git: Kept client site code under version control in Git.
- Ownership: Took every client site all the way to production, so clients could fill, grow and manage it on their own.
- Communication: Used business and supplier experience from retail to speak the client's language and understand their needs; earned 20 five-star reviews.
- Early adopter: Built every site mobile-first with SCSS and a Gulp build at a time when these practices were only emerging.
- UX: Designed sites so non-technical clients could add content and manage features themselves, without ongoing help.