Kyle Jennings, Developer in Washington, DC, United States
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Kyle Jennings

Verified Expert  in Engineering

Software Developer

Location
Washington, DC, United States
Toptal Member Since
December 15, 2016

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

Mobomo LLC
CSS, Docker, Composer, Vagrant, HTML, JavaScript, Apache2, PHP, WordPress
Freelance Work
CSS, Vue, JavaScript, HTML, PHP, WordPress, Ruby on Rails (RoR), Ruby
ISL
CSS, Fabric, Django, JavaScript, HTML, WordPress

Experience

Availability

Part-time

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

2015 - PRESENT
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.
Technologies: CSS, Docker, Composer, Vagrant, HTML, JavaScript, Apache2, PHP, WordPress

Freelance Developer | Hobbyist

2012 - PRESENT
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.
Technologies: CSS, Vue, JavaScript, HTML, PHP, WordPress, Ruby on Rails (RoR), Ruby

Creative Technologist (Web Developer)

2014 - 2015
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/.
Technologies: CSS, Fabric, Django, JavaScript, HTML, WordPress

Instructor Assistant

2014 - 2014
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.
Technologies: JavaScript, CSS, HTML

Tidy Templates

https://github.com/kyle-jennings/tidy-templates
Tidy Templates is a WordPress plugin which allows developers to move the default location of page templates and adds additional templates.

By 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

A food truck tracking website for the DC metro region using the Twitter API and Google Maps. StreetEatsDC.com uses tweets to approximately plot the location of food trucks to a Google map, and provide directions to the truck from the user's position.

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

HowFuckedistheMetro.com is a fun project which uses swear words to describe the status of the DC metro system.

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_policy
A WordPress plugin to provide a customizable password enforcement policy for both standard WordPress sites and multisite setups. It allows administrators to set password expiration lifespans and password complexity requirements. Other similar plugins were unsuitable: they either no longer work, are no longer supported, do not work with multisite setups, or are not as comprehensive or customizable.

ISL Website

The ISL.co build was a fun project that tapped all of our developers for various tasks.

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

When the USA hit series, Mr Robot, launched my employee was hired to build a microsite and interactive campaign and contest to give money away.

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/
Sleep.org was a fun WordPress site that I built. It takes custom post types, custom taxonomies, and custom user roles, and uses them to provide registered users with a customized experience.

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/
Vacation Better is a website built to help inform the public about timeshares.

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/
This was my last project with a former employer, the Digital Learning Now Report Card (and much of the site itself).

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-data
This project started my relationship with building interactive maps (something I've done on almost every project I've worked on).

These 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

Rtattoos.com is a pet project that I built using Ruby on Rails. It allows visitors to anonymously submit tattoos.

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

A simple CMS built on Ruby on Rails, this site represents a number of similar sites which I built for various clients at the same time.

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.

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)

2008 - 2012

Bachelor of Science in Information Systems

Virginia Commonwealth University - Richmond, VA, USA

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