Skylarking.Org, n.
The act of running about the internet in sport, hence, frolicking; scuffing; sporting; carousing.

Some Sites I've Been a Boson on.

Some sites I have worked on.

WWW.Skylarking.Org

Role: Full Stack / Architect

This is the site you are looking at.  I built it from the ground up (started as a D6 site :) ) including setting up the LAMP server it runs on.   

This Drupal 8 version is using a totally custom Radix subtheme (Bootstrap 4).  Some points of interest are the use of border images for the rope border,  the site being updated to be responsive, and replacing what used to be images in the header and navbar with text and CSS to get a psuedo 'engraved' look.

While obviously I am not a graphics / UX designer, I hope this shows I can 'play one' and that my mother who was an art teacher had some effect on me...lol

WWW.SolarWindsMSP.Com

Role: Full Stack / Technical Lead

SolarWindsMSP is the main site for information about the SolarWinds MSP division.  This is a multilingual Drupal 8 site (since 2016)  that uses a Bootstrap subtheme (Bootstrap 3)  and paragraphs as they main layout method. 

Some major things I have been responsible for are: 

  • Supplying technical advice to various marketing areas on how to meet business needs.
  • Mentoring / Training junior developers.
  • Wrote 30+ modules, including front end theming and alternate language support.
  • Manage the site via composer, including identifying and applying 15+ patches needed to fix various contrib module problems.
  • Setting the site up to use Features to manage the configuration files.
  • Managed / coded three major theme rebranding initiatives and many minor ones.
  • Working with Marketing Automation to ensure Marketo forms and other needs are met by the site.
  • Converting from Google Site Index to Drupal SearchAPI 
  • Updating the site to meet corporate GDPR security audit requirement
  • Responding to SEO requirements, including setting up Metatags, Schema.org information and customizing the SimpleSitemap module sitemap.xml output.
  • Converted from AWS server to Acquia including setting up CloudFlare DNS / CDN
  • Set up monitoring / responded to various DDoS attacks
  • Decommissioning / Rolling content in from various old brand sites (generally D7) into the main site.
  • Updating core / contributed modules on a regular basis.
  • Managing / Integrating code from 3rd party vendors.

WWW.PassportalMSP.com

Role: Full Stack / Technical Lead

The PassportalMSP site is a sub-brand site (acquired product) for the SolarWinds Passportal product.  This site was recently converted from a Hubspot site to Drupal 8 using a Radix sub-theme (Bootstrap 4) and Layout Manager and paragraphs as the main layout method.

Some major things I have been responsible for are:

  • Full ground up rebuild of the code base to use latest D8 modules, etc.
  • Creation of the Radix SolarWinds branded theme
  • Creation of the Layout Options module (now a contrib module).
  • Transfer / Modifying for BS 4 of modules from main SW site.
  • Setting up the Acquia instance for this site
  • Implementing the redirects from the old site to the new site using .htaccess
  • Improving / Integrating 3rd party code to import blogs from hubspot.

WWW.DukeHealth.Org

Role:  Drupal Technical Lead / Client Embedded System Admin / Technical Deployment Lead

At the time I worked on it, DukeHealth.org was a Drupal 7 / Angular.js hybrid site. I.e. most pages had their HTML framework generated by Drupal, with the actual content built using Angular.js making API calls back to Drupal.  

This site was created and updated by Modea (located in Blackburg, VA).  I was employed by them.  Some of the major things I was responsible for:

  • Worked at a desk in DU Hospital's web team department and was Modea's local 'go to' guy for problems, etc.
  • Responsible for working with Duke in updating, adding, ensuring smooth operations of the wide variety of information that was pulled from University system into the site on a daily basis.  E.g. Doctors, Locations, and the like.
  • Ensuring that code deployments went smoothly (some rocky rollouts was one reason I was hired).  E.g. ensuring no features had been rolled back by others, knowing what changes needed to be made in the GUI, what feeds needed to be updated and the like.
  • Created new API to support the Angular code as needed (and converted them from 'home grown' to the Drupal RestAPI)
  • Worked with SOLR / our SOLR consultants to make sure the required changes got implemented and were tested.
  • Set up a Jenkins server to facility automated testing.
  • Integrated the site with a 3rd party ratings service which included creating a local cache for performance reasons and an automatic update process.
  • Was the only Drupal programmer on Modea's staff (after a junior programmer left shortly after I joined).

Student.OHSU.Edu (defunct)

Role: Drupal Development Lead / Site Technical Architect

This was the Oregon Health & Science University's Student Portal site.  This was a one stop site that students across all the different programs could come and get information specific to them.  It also allowed administrators in the 50 odd programs to put out announcements to their student group(s).  

Longsight, Inc. got the contract to build this from the ground up.  This was done with a 3 person team consisting of a Project Manager, A Graphics/Theme designer, and me as the backend design and developer.

Some interesting things built into this site were:

  • Requiring users to login via Shibboleth
  • Importing users from the University system with auto add/remove functions and mapping users to appropriate message channels.
  • Implemented custom taxonomy based security system to allow 50+ editors add posts only in their specific areas.
  • Allowed users to customize their dashboard via the user_dashboard module with customizations.
  • Integration with the university calendar system.

WWW.Grinnell.Edu

Role: Drupal Development Lead

Longsight replaced another company as technical support for Grinnell University's main website.

Some main tasks here where:

  • Migrating the site to LS manage servers
  • Making the site meet the requirement specified by an Accessibility audit.
  • Modifying the site to be more content manager friendly
  • Theme refresh that included making the site responsive and mobile friendly.
  • Making sure the automatic linkages between the Alumni system and the main site worked / fixing problems.

Note:  This started a personal goal to try to make my code as accessible as possible.  Also, as a result of this work my co-worker, Carie Fisher, has become a well known accessibility advocate, speaker, writer, and trainer.