Michael Flanagan

…working with Dave and Ronan in WebTogether.

It’s my first time working together with a group in an office, as opposed to the usual freelancing routine of one man alone in his sitting room. This aspect alone – despite some initial reservation – is definitely something I’ve appreciated over the course of the year. It’s good to get out there, it’s great to share and bounce ideas around with smart people who, between them, know much more about visual design and the business side of business than I’d ever want to ;-), and it’s invaluable knowing that those other aspects are in such capable hands – while I get all excited over my codes.

Over the course of the past six months or so, I’ve expanded upon my knowledge of Codeigniter to build a powerful multi-site CMS system for our clients, launched websites for clients such as McGovern Surveyors, DBASS Accountants, ETAG Signs and the classifieds ads website, Fetch.ie. And at the back of it all has been the project which arguably brought us together, Octopied.

And Then?

For the new year I’m hoping to enjoy a good deal of the same, while shifting more of my time and attention over to Octopied. Over the Christmas break (my first real “time off work” all year) I’ve been reading extensively on the Symfony PHP framework, and I like what I see. Compared to CodeIgniter, it feels a bit like getting the kid-gloves off, and 2010 might just be the year for that. Here’s to it!

Happy new year!

An update on the lack of updates : busy working on a couple of very cool projects at the moment. One of which I’ve had on my mind for the past year, and it’s great to be finally getting something done. Hopefully some more news on the two of them soon enough.

A lot of this recent work I’ve been doing using the CodeIgniter PHP framework. After looking at a few different frameworks in the past number of months, I think I’ve settled on this one. Thanks in no small part to the rather excellent documentation.