RailsGrunt

portfolio

Grettings all. First off, thanks for visiting. It is real nice to see folks visiting from overseas!

Here are a few sites that I have completed. Please remember, I am no designer so I modified heavily on open source templates.

1. Tristatepost.com. This project is a classifieds style site where users can post items they would like to advertise for the tristate area(nj, pa, and del). Here are some features that I implemented:

1. all post form fields have all boundaries covered for valid input
2. posts are removed from public view when expiration date becomes true
3. admin account available to approve, disapprove, edit, delete, or add post information
4. google maps available for valid real estate addresses example
5. implemented captcha system to hide post contact information from email havesters
6. user can sort and view by category and state
7. description field is striped of any html or javascript langauge to safeguard against users trying to modify the site
8. picture uploading is available for certain categories
9. picture is resized for preview and to fit details page example
10. clean urls are implemented for better user experience
11. email notification is sent to cellphone in case site experiences a fault
12. pagination

2. Pical.us This site is a free image uploading service, similar functionality to places like imageshack. Here are some features:

1. in order to upload, images must be a valid picture and within a specified size
2. photo details page is addressed by title url
3. photos are resized to thumb, normal, and kept as original
4. photo details page contains the url to thumb, normal, and original size
5. photos can be tagged
6. photos can be listed by popularity and by latest date
7. photos are uploaded to amazon s3 to take advantage of the 20cent gig transfer cost and 15cent data storage
8. email notification is sent to cellphone in case site experiences a fault
9. random tags are displayed and sized accordingly via popularity
10. pagination
11. spam reporting is implemented and ipaddress is recorded. 1 ipaddress per spam vote per photo
12. once a spam count is reached, photo is removed

3. Jotterlog.com. This is a note taking site where members can create public or private notes. This site was created by taking advantage of rjs/ajax. Here are some features(best viewed using firefox/safari, you can try out the site by logging in with peterpetrilli/peterpetrilli *yes I’m a heroes fan):

1. implemented a registration process where users must validate themselves by activating an email invitation link which is sent after account information is properly filled out
2. user can receive new password if password is forgotten
3. notes can be edited, created, or deleted without any page refreshes via ajax
4. notes can be private or public
5. public notes are available through url friendly address. ex. http://jotterlog.com/user/koloa/21-ebay
6. members can create, edit, and manage categories for notes via ajax
7. email notification is sent to cellphone in case site experiences a fault
8. listing of users public notes can be seen via url friendly address http://jotterlog.com/user/koloa
9. notes can be rendered using either html or textile markup language

4. hollastar.com and h2daily.net The sites theme is based around celebrities and hiphop. The main purpose of these sites is to experiment with google analytics, adsense, and seo. Here are some features:

1. members can rate each post
2. members can leave comments
3. members can bookmark their favorite posts
4. members can view their comment history
5. members can view, edit, and delete their posts
6. members can embed video, preview pictures, picture links, and news links
7. hollastar is ver seo friendly
8. both sites can dynamically create rss feeds and sitemaps
9. posts can be sorted by date, popularity, and by rating
10. tags are implemented
11. url address are seo friendly
12. members can create and modify their profile
13. members can create avatars
14. all post boundaries are checked to be valid and must fall within expected limits
15. google analytics is installed
16. email notification is sent to cellphone in case site experiences a fault
17. site is developed to be very easy to modify and adjusted to other themed sites
18. tags are implemented and can be viewed all by random or by popularity
19. search using ferret engine
20. artists can be listed by first letter
21. user spam count implemented, if max is reached, user is banned

5. digg clone. This site contains basic features similiar to digg.com. Some features include:

1. all new posts are listed in the upcoming category example
2. posts must be voted on by members
3. once a post reaches a certain amount of positive votes, post will be moved to designated category with feature date updated
4. user can only vote once
5. non members must fill out a captcha to link to story
6. spam reporting feature implemented
7. user spam count implemented, if max is reached, user is banned
8. caching implemented

These are my first sites. I know I rewrote tristatepost.com 3 times before letting it ‘be’. Since it was my first project, I learned plenty of tricks or proper ways of DRY’ing out code(thanks to folks on railsforum and rails-forum). Each rewrite, I trimmed off about 30% of code. The image hosting site took me about a saturday to develop, and jotterlog site took about a weeks worth of coding part time. I program around 1 to 2 hrs a day during the work week. weekends I’m all game! I know I can implement ‘some’ or even ‘most’ features of all the big dog sites out there.

Some more background about me. Ive been developing and learning all I can with web development using Ruby on Rails for about 1 year. When I first started, I didn’t even have basic understanding of html, css, javascript, apache, web hosting, mysql, let alone ruby on rails. Now with these projects, I am very comfortable in developing! Most of my knowledge in programming is in c++, so I spent a good deal of time brute forcing my way through all things web development and a stack of ruby rails books. I still have plenty of ways to go. I also have a degree in computer science from Rutgers University in NJ and been working for the past 6 years as a software engineer.

Now I got those sites out the way, its time for me to concentrate on bigger community driven projects. I have plenty of ideas that need implementation. I would rather concentrate on the backend and leave the design and interface to someone many times more experienced. I am actively looking for partners, particularly web designers! care to join me? working together, we can bang out what could possibly be a nice site in 2-3 weeks time(positive thinking here). How nice would it be to have long term income? Heck if ad revenue can generate 5 dollars a day, thats a free lunch =)(some folks are making many times that). What ever our sites generate, we split 50/50. So what do you say? I’m hard working, paying my dues, professional, steadily growing in my technical abilities daily, and can be reached anytime of day. Contact me!

Peace and hope to hear from you!

If you don’t have the discipline and time to complete a project, please don’t bother me. I’m a person who works full-time, sits in traffic 2 hrs a day, and pays a mortgage, I don’t have time to waste! But if you are an experienced designer, give me a chance.