Full-stack software engineer. Surfer, family man and cat negotiator on the Gold Coast, Australia.
Scroll for the storyI build the whole stack: the server, the app on top and the phone app that talks to it.
Ubuntu, Nginx and a properly tuned database at the bottom. Laravel, WordPress and NativePHP above. Security and speed all the way through.
Most days that means writing PHP: Laravel apps, custom WordPress themes and plugins, and the APIs that tie them together. On the front end it's clean, semantic HTML, modern CSS and just enough JavaScript. This site is hand-written HTML and CSS, no framework.
Underneath sit the Bash scripts, Nginx configs and SQL tuned for MySQL, MariaDB and Postgres. I like code that's fast, secure and easy for the next developer to pick up. When the surf's up, I'm in the water.
Surfing came first. I've chased waves all over the world, Namotu Island in Fiji included.
As a junior I competed in Europe, but the contest scene wasn't for me. Being forced to perform in crappy one-foot slop isn't why I surf.
These days the sessions fit around work, school runs and three cats.
to
Micros systems technician
Durban, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa
HP IT generalist trainer
United Kingdom
Delivered sales, product and technology training, plus sales IT support, to HP's biggest UK reseller partners as part of a small UK-wide team.
to
Lenovo (opens in a new tab) business development manager
London, United Kingdom
to now
2007The year Creative Ground opened
Lauren (my wife) and I founded Creative Ground (opens in a new tab) in 2007, working with international clients before we moved the studio to Burleigh Waters on the Gold Coast.
Well over 2,500 projects later, everything is still designed and built in-house, for clients like Zenith Payments, Griffith University Student Guild and the Harding Miller Foundation.
443The port everything I build runs on
I set up and run Linux servers on my own, from a blank machine to production. Ubuntu is my favourite, and I work at expert level with Nginx, Redis, PHP, MySQL, MariaDB and Postgres.
Security is built in at both ends, on the server and in the application. Performance gets the same treatment: I tune servers, WordPress sites and Laravel apps until there's nothing left to shave off.
1Codebase for web, Android and iOS
I write my own WordPress themes and plugins, with stronger security and performance built in than you get off the shelf.
I build advanced Laravel applications and frameworks, then use NativePHP on top of them to ship Android and iOS apps alongside the web app.
A portal for provisioning servers and managing WordPress, WooCommerce and Laravel sites. Servers on Vultr, DigitalOcean, Hetzner or Linode come set up with Nginx, PHP-FPM, MariaDB and Redis.
Billing, backups, monitoring and a white-label client portal are built in, for agencies, freelancers and hosting businesses.
Visit stackmattic.com (opens in a new tab)
Free tools for WordPress and servers: generators for wp-config.php, child themes, plugins, Nginx, MariaDB, Redis and PHP, plus checks for HTTP headers, HTTP/3, DNS and more.
Visit wp-config.org (opens in a new tab)3Cats, at last count
Home is my wife, our two kids and three cats. My wife loves cats. If she had her way, we'd have over a hundred.
Life's a big party. It might not be a great party, but whilst we're here, we may as well dance!!!
I take on development work through Creative Ground: Laravel and WordPress builds, NativePHP apps, server setup, security and speed.
Tell me what you're building and I'll come back with a plan.
Find me elsewhere
On while I work: Creative Ground
