TheHandbagExchange.com

An innovative e-commerce website that offers visitors the opportunity to sell their old handbags and buy nearly-new ones. The Handbag Exchange is featured regularly on Irish TV, Radio and the written press. It has received widespread acclaim for its unique business plan, as well as its generosity in donating 5% of all sales to Action Breast Cancer, Ireland.

I was hired to design and develop the website in late 2006. As the target audience is primarily female, I paid careful attention in the design phase to achieving the correct balance of aesthetics and functionality.

I developed the site using the Ruby on Rails development framework, with secure online payment processing implemented with Realex's XML-RPC web service. I also provided hosting, configuring the site's Linux based server specifically for running a Ruby on Rails application.

RedCafe.net

My first website, created in 1997, and now the most popular online Manchester United community in the world, serving over 12 million pages and 100,000 worldwide visitors a month.

Originally created as a content driven website with news, match reports, editorials and multimedia content, I have evolved the site over the years into a thriving community driven by user generated content.

In 1999, RedCafe.net was a double nominee at Ireland's top web awards, the Golden Spiders. The site was put forward for Best Young Person's Website and Best Personal Website awards, winning the latter.

Abroad.ie

Abroad Magazine is published by Woodfield Publishing Ltd, based in Dublin. It first hit the Irish market in January 2003 and quickly became Ireland's favourite travel magazine.

I designed, developed and maintained the Abroad.ie website from 2004 - 2007. The site is much more than an online edition of the magazine, it also provides hundreds of up-to-date Travel Deals from Ireland's leading Travel Agents and Operators. More than 100 companies are signed up with Abroad where they post the latest deals through the customised Travel Deals Content Management System.

ToyBarn.ie

Toy Barn is an entirely online based merchant selling children's toys. Based on the target audience and theme of the site, I created a very colourful, cartoon style logo and design. This presented some unique challenges from a frontend coding perspective, but it was implemented without sacrificing accessibility or standards compliance.

The backend development of the website involved the creation of a bespoke content-management system enabling the client to manage their product catalogue.

The shopping cart processes transactions with PayPal's secure payment system.