
Kyle Jennings
Verified Expert in Engineering
Software Developer
Kyle is a full WordPress developer—specializing in building intuitive user friendly WordPress sites and using WordPress as an application framework to build web apps, plugin development, and dabble in some sysops. All his sites are designed to be mobile first using Foundation/Bootstrap, Gulp, and SASS using BEM for clean code. Kyle strives to better himself and his work so he always puts the client's best interest in front of his every decision.
Portfolio
Experience
Availability
Preferred Environment
VirtualBox, Vagrant, Git, OS X, Ubuntu
The most amazing...
...is howisthemetro.com—a mobile first web app which consumes the WMATA API and calculates train positions, waiting times, and delays.
Work Experience
WordPress Multisite Administrator & Developer
Mobomo LLC
- Worked as the sole administrator, developer, support technician, and project manager for a government-run WordPress multisite used by 60 government agencies.
- Developed a user security policy plugin and a multisite network reports plugin.
- Migrated a platform from a shared hosting environment to a modern Docker environment on AWS.
- Planned the future growth and modernization of platform to provide a “Fee For Service” platform using a WordPress multisite.
- Provides user WordPress training and technical support—covering topics from WordPress fundamentals to CSS support.
Freelance Developer | Hobbyist
Freelance Work
- Developed an extremely customizable WordPress theme built on Bootstrap.
- Created Tidy Templates—a WordPress framework plugin to facilitate a fast paced, MVC application development.
- Developed a real-time metro train tracking site using the WMATA API.
- Built a food truck tracking website using the Twitter API and Google Maps.
- Developed a social network for a niche tattoo market.
Creative Technologist (Web Developer)
ISL
- Developed a user-driven WordPress sites (such as sleep.org).
- Developed microsites and fast-paced micro-campaigns such as the Mr. Robot contest site: https://isl.co/case-studies/mr-robot-launch-campaign/.
Instructor Assistant
General Assembly
- Assisted in teaching 70 students front-end web development. Answered questions in class, as well as helping co-develop the homework.
- Held open office tutoring sessions two times a week.
Experience
Tidy Templates
https://github.com/kyle-jennings/tidy-templatesBy default, WordPress looks for template files in the root of the theme folder and only the root of the theme folder. These templates are also expected to contain either both the logic and presentation for a given view, or use the outdated WordPress loop. WordPress also only supports a limited (albeit satisfactory) set of templates.
Tidy Templates solves these three problems by providing the following features:
• Allows the location of the template files to be moved to a specified folder. This allows developers to clean up their theme folders.
• Provides a function to load a "view", where data to be displayed is passed into it, much like a classic MVC framework.
• Provides 2 additional templates: template specific pagination, and filename matched custom post types.
StreetEats DC
StreetEats DC also allows food truck vendors to register with the site and manage a profile with food truck markers, and also compose tweets. Soon vendors will be able to compose Facebook updates as well so this site will be used as a portal for their social media outlets.
It is built on WordPress using my Tidy Templates plugin for rapid Rails-like development. The site is also a progressive web app which can be downloaded to your phone's home screen.
How Fucked is the Metro
It consumes data from the WMATA API and then calculates a number of things: the average wait times of trains on a given line (as well as its health status), upcoming trains at a given station, and train positions.
The site is currently undergoing a rebuild, but at one time (and soon again) allowed users to tweet pre-written metro statuses directly from the app. In this rebuild, the site is being redesigned to provide desktop users with a more useful dashboard experience.
This site was written in custom PHP, HTML/CSS (no framework), and jQuery. The current design was also built using Vue.js
WordPress Password Policy Plugin
https://github.com/kyle-jennings/wp_password_policyISL Website
We built this site to replace the older WordPress site, converting everything to use AWS services and HTTPS.
I took ownership of the back-end and built the site using a combination of my Tidy Templates plugin, and the great Timber plugin which allowed our front-end developers to work simultaneously alongside the back-end development.
Mr. Robot Launch Campaign
I was put in charge of building the microsite (whose time on the internet was limited). This site allowed visitors to input a secret code which was unveiled on Twitch.tv, to win money. It was a fast-paced job with lots of early mornings and late nights as the project changed almost daily.
Sleep.org
https://sleep.org/I built a quiz which determines a user's "sleeper persona" which then drives the type of content a user would see on their dashboard's feed. The dashboard is not location in the WordPress admin—its all front end, as is the rest of their profile.
The quiz also determines which mailing list topic a user can sign up.
We also built other features such as auto marking "popular posts" which are stuck to the top of a particular feed and a dashboard for admins to see how people are using the site.
Vacation Better
http://vacationbetter.org/The site was built on WordPress using Advance Custom Fields (ACF). I used ACF's Flexible Content feature to build a feature which allows the client to have complete control over their page structure and content. See how all the content is organize into full width horizontal sections? All are customizable. This was built before the huge influx of JavaScript page builders.
Digital Learning Now
http://www.digitallearningnow.com/report-card/I inherited an interactive map, but added features to it (such as changing the data categories), and created the individual state pages. This was built in Backbone.js.
The rest of the website is a WordPress site. I built the entire back-end myself and worked on the front-end with a colleague who I was training.
Business Round Table Interactive State Maps
http://businessroundtable.org/resources/state-dataThese maps were built using a pre built clickable SVG map, and jQuery. All the data is managed by a Drupal 7 back-end that I built.
Rtattoos
Users can register with the site either as tattoo artists (they create a profile, then can create albums of their work, and submit their shop location to display on a Google map) or as tattoo enthusiasts (who can favorite and vote on tattoos, follow artist activity, and submit their own albums of tattoos).
I did 100% of the work on this site from design, to development, to putting it on the server.
Charles Berger Tattoos
It was designed to provide a very simple and intuitive admin panel for the artist to showcase his tattoos and artwork, blog, sell artwork, display events, and more.
This was one of the very first sites that I designed and built myself. It was one of the sites that I built before I became a WordPress developer.
Skills
Languages
HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Sass, PHP, Ruby
Platforms
WordPress, LAMP, Ubuntu, Linux, OS X, Apache2, Docker, Drupal 7
Frameworks
ZURB Foundation, Bootstrap, Django, Ruby on Rails (RoR)
Libraries/APIs
Google Maps API, Fabric, Vue, Facebook API, Twitter API
Tools
Vagrant, Git, GitHub, Gulp, VirtualBox, Composer, Bower, Apache
Paradigms
BEM
Other
Command-line Interface (CLI)
Storage
MySQL, Amazon S3 (AWS S3)
Education
Bachelor of Science in Information Systems
Virginia Commonwealth University - Richmond, VA, USA