Business is good

I've been a bit slack on my blog for the past year or so, but there's a good reason for that.

I've set up a business, doing web design and development, with my good friend and colleague Dan Lindop.

The company is called Surefire Media, and so far things have been pretty good. We've been lucky enough to get some good business in and been able to work on some interesting projects (see our portfolio for more details).

We've done quite a few interesting ColdFusion sites, but I've also been progressing my knowledge of PHP and used it to create some nice mash-ups with things like Google maps (e.g. EFT Register).

We've got a few projects of our own in the pipeline, more on those soon...

Tumblers Bar

I tend to steer clear of web design and concentrate more on development, as that's what I'm best at. I have, however, recently started to take more of an interest in XHTML and CSS based layouts and designs, and I've just finished putting a site together for a friend of mine to promote a new business venture, Tumblers Bar:

The logo was designed by Lynsey Edwards, and I used the colours to create contemporary looking site with bright colours on a black background.

The layout is simple, but I think it works - and the XHTML and CSS validates properly.

coldfusion 8 - interesting stuff!

i've been doing a few things with coldfusion 8 recently, but i've been so busy that i don't really have time to it justice here at the moment.

the most intersting new features for me are:

• cfimage - at last, native image manipulation in cf
• cfzip - ditto for zip files
• all the ajax stuff (although i must say i'm a bit disappointed with the wysiwyg editor as it lacks decent image support)

hopefully i'll be able to add a bit more information soon about what i've been doing with the new technology...

auction news

i've recently finished working on the new auction news website:

auction news are a client of net syndicate, where i'm lead developer.

the site has been built using coldfusion and uses a mysql database. it allows full online management of adverts with the facility to generate pdf and rtf reports that are used to create the actual puplications.

users can register, buy subscriptions online, search for adverts and download pdf versions of the publications. they can also store favourites and set email alert preferences.

the tidy templates were designed by dan lindop, who is lead designer at net syndicate.

welcome to my blog

i thought, being a web developer, that it was about time to ventured into the world of blogging - so here i am.

my aim is to keep this blog up to date with things i hope people will find either interesting or useful, so watch this space...

you can check out my personal profile to find out a bit more about me, or visit my personal website at http://www.andrewjohnston.me.uk/.

Thanks for visiting!