Nick Wright

Nick Wright

Full Stack Engineer & DevOps

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About Me

I love being involved in every step of a website's creation: from making sure a database table has its appropriate indexes, to every viewport looking great. Set me loose on a project and it'll be done faster than you can say WYSIWYG.

Latest Project

FFXIVCrafting

FFXIVCrafting - Crafting information and planning

Crafting items is a big part of the game. My tool assists others to utilize their time wisely by organizing their crafting into steps.

Started in September 2013 shortly after the game's 2.0 patch. The community was very supportive and I've been updating it since. Some users claim they can't live without it.

Even though I don't play anymore, I keep it up to date as new patches are released.

Visit Tool View on GitHub

Project Showcase

Crafting Ninja

Crafting Ninja

An abandoned Laravel project of mine that was going to take the concept of FFXIVCrafting.com and expand upon it as a broader platform to support all games.

This code is a beacon of how I develop: Clean code, self-utilized API, efficient Eloquent relationships, and built using TDD.

View on GitHub

Work Experience

Senior Full Stack Engineer - Legrand (2012 - Present)

Back End

  • The Team Lead for anything Laravel, PHP or MySQL related
  • Maintained six Laravel applications, upgrading from versions 4 to 9 as they released
  • Transitioned all PHP applications from versions 5 to 8, including HHVM, as they released
  • Interfaced with a number of third party APIs, including Akamai and SendGrid
  • Built Unit Tests with automated testing to ensure code completion

Front End

  • A leader in CSS/JS methodologies amongst the team
  • Architected a CSS and JS module/loading system that increases pagespeed scores from ~30 to ~90
  • Successfully implemented a PWA with an offline page option
  • Implemented Accessibility changes to improve the lives of the disabled
  • Built Gulp build processes to improve developer quality of life in both asset-committed and src/dest codebases

DevOps

  • Built and Managed five Digital Ocean servers, home to 40 domains, 30 mysql schemas and 10 redis databases
  • Implemented zero downtime deployments via Deployer (PHP)
  • Rerouted traffic through CDNs, like Akamai and KeyCDN
  • Built and Managed an internal Vagrant development environment mimicing the production environment
  • Had a positive impact on developer quality of life with Mac/Linux relevant aliases and shortcuts

In Short

  • Developed and delivered customer facing web applications, primarily eCommerce
  • Worked with a team of developers who shared ideas constantly
Expand for project details!
Connect.C2G.com

A tool built to help end users find a solution to match their connectivity needs. My first big project with Legrand. Complicated MySQL queries power the formula to distinguish a cable's A and B ends, length, color, etc and present them to a user.

CablesToGo.com including C2G.com and related subdomains

As a primary focus to drive eCommerce, I implemented a responsive design suitable for all browsers and devices, even supporting IE8 until early 2017.

With a backend built on Java/SAP/CRM, interfacing with a separate team to deliver a great experience had it's own set of challenges. We could not rely on a standard backend system or framework to do things for the frontend team. I built a lot of PHP & Linux backend customization to allow us to work on the front end.

The Administrator Internal

A tool to maintain every other Legrand property mentioned above.

Includes everything from CRUD interfaces to Local Network File System Mounting, and a robust ACL system for internal users.

Sales Tools Internal

A tool for internal sales representatives to build custom cables for customers, as well as enter bids with the company's Bid Desk for approval.

Saving the company an entire employee's role, it also sped up the "speed to quote" bottom line, which has had a positive impact on winning custom cable bids.

Apps.CablesToGo.com Pseudo-internal

Whenever the Java backend team couldn't fulfill a need, Apps stepped in. Primarily responding to Ajax calls, it also handled a pretty complicated Asset Versioning system triggered by a Git Hook whenever a pull request was closed.

Miscellaneous

Marketing Emails

Still in the <table> era, email building can be grueling. I made it a little easier by implementing a Grunt system (later rewritten to Gulp) that reads Assemble/Handlebar files, then inlines any css and prettify's the result.

Documentation

Any complicated system absolutely requires documentation. Every system I implemented came with Documentation for my current and future coworkers.

Sr. Web Developer - Media Resources Corporation (2009 - 2012)

  • Originally hired on a contractual basis and within a year promoted to project lead
  • Worked with a close-knit group to develop a web application based on a patent pending idea
  • Developed application to the point of marketability and provided customer support
  • Developed side projects which saved the company $20,000 a year
  • Continued to freelance with the company after end of employment, including server support and software related bug fixes
Expand for project details!
MRCSupplies.com

Essentially a startup, I worked directly with the Owner on a patent pending idea, I helped develop a system called Hive. Embarrassingly, the system I invented was a "roll your own" framework. You learn a lot when doing that, but in hindsight it was not a good idea. MRCSupplies was both a separate business of the Owner and a customer of the Hive system, which at its core was an eCommerce system.

Likewise with the backend framework there was no visual framework (like Bootstrap).

MRCRepro.com

To support another piece of the Owner's business, this side project helped his reproduction graphics business get organized. A lot of work involving FTP and user permissions were involved for a customer to manage their architecture bids.

Jr. Web Developer - Interbrand Design Forum (2008)

  • Troubleshot and repaired legacy Visual Basic programs and Access databases
  • Rebuilt existing Visual Basic/Access programs as web applications
  • Created new internal web applications
  • Continued to freelance with the company after end of employment

Other Projects

The Dark Ages - Here There Be Dragons (2001 - 2009)

Starting in 2001 I had a personal project based in Perl and MySQL. Realizing I loved developing, in 2003 I switched from a community college to ITT Tech under their Web Development program. When I graduated in 2005 I started my professional career. I jumped around every few years, occassionally taking on freelance work, and joining a startup.

Could I show you examples of work from this time period? Sure, but let's face it, I hate code I built three years ago; why would I want to display code I wrote decades ago! Even scarier: there are things I had "designed" ten years ago, *shudder*.

More Mini-Projects on CodePen