Why choose
bcreative web design?
I’m a freelance front end developer based in Northern Ireland with over 15 years experience in web design & development. I specialise in high end WordPress design and development tailored to each individual client’s needs.
some of my work
I only build customised themes for all of my web projects, I don’t use pre-built themes.
I am experienced in WordPress set up, WordPress development and use. Whether you need an eCommerce website set up to recieve payments via PayPal or a simple one page website. I build bespoke solutions invidually tailored to my client's needs. I have worked with a variety of APIs and other third party programs which will seamlessly integrate with your WordPress website. I also have experience in the set up and use of other Content Management Systems such as Joomla, Drupal and Magento.
Checkout a snippet
of what i'm up to
Gatsby
I thought I would give this a whirl and learn a bit more about GraphQL and expand my horizons. Gatsby uses the latest web technologies including React, Webpack, GraphQL, modern JavaScript, and can add more to power your headless CMS web projects.
Bootstrap 5, Block Based WordPress theme Development & Gutenberg
I was recently approached by an agency to take on a freelance web development project, unfortunately due to scheduling conflicts I was unable to take the job on but I thought it would be a great opportunity as a test project to try out the new Bootstrap 5 framework and whilst I was at it, why not throw in building a new custom theme with Gutenberg blocks.
I used to use my own custom theme based on Foundation to build my sites so having to learn a new framework was enjoyable as well as frustrating but I have to say I’m quite liking Bootstrap 5 and that’s saying a lot as I used to avoid Bootstrap at all costs! I found it very heavy and cumbersome to use but the new version can be customised and stripped down which is great.
I’ve now got a new custom boilerplate theme I can use to base my WordPress websites on. I’m still not sure about Gutenberg however, I think it has its good points and its bad points. To move away from doing every via code was a scary step for me, I prefer to have control over everything and I am so used to coding it in the backend. For those projects where clients need to do more customisation themselves, I do think it is definitely a step in the right direction and it’s taking on Elementor and other page builder plugins but it definitely does have a long way to go to match these plugins.
I am still developing a custom block based theme using Gutenberg’s reusable blocks and block patterns as custom page templates. It’s taking some getting used to but I’m almost there!
Docker & WordPress
I was really interested in trying out docker with my WordPress workflow. It would be great to have a standalone contained copy of my websites that I could just move from computer to computer without having to install a full development environment every time. I followed this tutorial to set it up https://youtu.be/pYhLEV-sRpY I found using docker a bit slow but in fairness this could have been down to my poor long suffering laptop, really need to delete some files and free up some space!
Local by Flywheel
I always love to see how I can improve my development workflow so I decided to try Local by Flywheel. It has become one of the top local WordPress development tools with one-click installation of WordPress. It has loads of free features to use, like SSL protection of local sites with the the ability to change your local domain name, hot-swapping environments from different versions of PHP, MySQL and web servers (Appache, Nginx), and with the ability to install add-ons to further improve your sites local development localbyflywheel.com
Fitbit Versa ClockFace
I recently got a Fitbit Versa and after browsing through the gallery I couldn’t find any that I really liked so I decided to create my own. I wanted something very minimal and simple. Getting started was very easy. I started to design and build my own clock face using this API guide from Fitbit
I’ve now finally upgraded to an Apple Watch so my next project is building a custom watch face for it. If only I could download Xcode without killing my laptop, I would be a lot farther along at this point.
React Challenges
I’ve been very interested in finding out ways to integrate React with WordPress and the best way to use it on my WordPress sites. I’m always researching new technologies to update my skills as a Front end developer. As React is fast becoming an essential tool for web developers, I wanted to learn the fundamentals of building user interfaces using this JavaScript library. I started off by creating a very simple headless CMS following this online tutorial.