oliverdavies.uk/content/node.27926937-f426-490f-ac0a-454d9d2def37.yml

88 lines
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title:
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<p>In 2007, I was working in the IT sector in a Desktop Support role but hadn't done any coding professionally.</p>
<p>In my spare time, I was a black belt in Tae Kwon-Do and enjoyed training at a few different schools. Because of my IT experience, I was asked if I could create a website for one of the schools - somewhere that we could post information and class times for new starters, as well as news articles and competition results.</p>
<p>This would be my introduction to programming.</p>
<p>I started learning what I needed to know, starting with HTML and CSS - experimenting with a template that I found online and was able to tweak to match the school's colours.</p>
<p>I was able to complete the first version of the website with static HTML pages and CSS but had to manually create a new HTML page for every new news article and edit existing pages manually.</p>
<p>I wanted to make it more dynamic, and started to learn about PHP and MySQL from video courses and online forums.</p>
<p>After posting a question about some PHP code that I'd written, someone suggested that I look at content management systems - namely Drupal, which was used for that forum (I have <a href="https://twitter.com/opdavies/status/1185456825103241216">a screenshot of the reply</a>). This was a new concept to me as until that point, I'd written everything so far myself whilst learning it.</p>
<p>I remember evaluating Drupal alongside some others - rebuilding the same website a few different times, but stuck with Drupal and relaunched it on Drupal 6 and a custom theme that I'd created from the original templates.</p>
<p>I signed up for a Drupal.org account, started to do some freelance work for a local web design agency, and built a new website for a local cattery.</p>
<p>I started blogging, attending meetups, and when an opportunity to switch careers to software development came along, I applied for and got the job.</p>
<p>That job was also using Drupal and, in another email, I'll write more about why I still like and use Drupal years later.</p>
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<p>In 2007, I was working in the IT sector in a Desktop Support role but hadn't done any coding professionally.</p>
<p>In my spare time, I was a black belt in Tae Kwon-Do and enjoyed training at a few different schools. Because of my IT experience, I was asked if I could create a website for one of the schools - somewhere that we could post information and class times for new starters, as well as news articles and competition results.</p>
<p>This would be my introduction to programming.</p>
<p>I started learning what I needed to know, starting with HTML and CSS - experimenting with a template that I found online and was able to tweak to match the school's colours.</p>
<p>I was able to complete the first version of the website with static HTML pages and CSS but had to manually create a new HTML page for every new news article and edit existing pages manually.</p>
<p>I wanted to make it more dynamic, and started to learn about PHP and MySQL from video courses and online forums.</p>
<p>After posting a question about some PHP code that I'd written, someone suggested that I look at content management systems - namely Drupal, which was used for that forum (I have <a href="https://twitter.com/opdavies/status/1185456825103241216">a screenshot of the reply</a>). This was a new concept to me as until that point, I'd written everything so far myself whilst learning it.</p>
<p>I remember evaluating Drupal alongside some others - rebuilding the same website a few different times, but stuck with Drupal and relaunched it on Drupal 6 and a custom theme that I'd created from the original templates.</p>
<p>I signed up for a Drupal.org account, started to do some freelance work for a local web design agency, and built a new website for a local cattery.</p>
<p>I started blogging, attending meetups, and when an opportunity to switch careers to software development came along, I applied for and got the job.</p>
<p>That job was also using Drupal and, in another email, I'll write more about why I still like and use Drupal years later.</p>
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