Nickolas Bossinas

This is a WordPress file upload plugin I developed. It enables file uploads from WordPress pages, posts, or sidebars. The plugin also contains a visual editor for easy configuration and many options to satisfy almost all users. It's one of the most popular in its category. The free version has more than 1,000,000 downloads.

This plugin has been integrated with Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, Dropbox, Amazon S3, Meta Messenger, FTP, sFTP, and NextGEN Gallery. It has a hook system that allows almost all features and functions to be extended or entirely redefined. This way, several other enhancements have been implemented for customers, such as integration with WooCommerce and WebDAV, file moderation, loggers, file checkers, filename modifiers, and new file viewer columns.

It provides front-end and back-end file viewers so users can view and download their files. The UI of the upload form relies on a templating system, which allows one to implement it with any technology. A new version is on its way, where the upload form is created with React and MaterialUI.

An extract of the professional version of the WordPress File Upload plugin. It contains the client-side code in JavaScript and server-side code in PHP that enable uploads of files of unlimited size from an upload form. Normally web servers impose restrictions regarding the size of uploaded content and upload duration.

Files larger than 100MB will usually fail. The attached code demonstrates how to use the JavaScript slice() function to cut the file in pieces or chunks on the client side, upload them individually, and reassemble them on the server side. This way, there are no restrictions. The WordPress File Upload plugin has been reported to succeed in uploading files of more than 4GB.

The installation of a plugin in a WordPress website that adds file upload forms on the front end imposes many security risks if security measures are not taken into account seriously.

The link above is a comprehensive study about threats related to WordPress plugins and upload forms. It details these threats, their implementation process, and preventive measures. It also demonstrates in detail how the WordPress File Upload plugin addresses all these threats individually.

WordPress allows developers to customize its elements and add or change functionalities through filters and actions. This hook technique is used for PHP code on the server side. However, there is no such hook technique for client-side code in JavaScript. The WordPress File Upload plugin extract creates a framework that enables filters and actions to be used in JavaScript code, just like in PHP.

A commercial version of the WordPress File Upload plugin implements a file drag-and-drop feature onto a form. Users can add multiple files to a form by selecting them from their computer and dragging them onto the upload form. This drag-and-drop functionality is implemented using JavaScript and its drag-and-drop events.

Iptanus is a portal for promoting my commercial plugins and providing technical support. The support area contains pages with instructions about published plugins. The Technical Articles area has many technical articles about various functionalities of the published plugins. There are also many articles related to general web-programming issues, like how to add Google reCAPTCHA without public and private keys and web security.

The website uses WooCommerce, which has been extended through its filtering system with a plugin to perform custom operations.

The aim of this project was to showcase a TweetME plugin. It contains PHP code that demonstrates OAuth 2.0 authentication process with a Twitter account so that the plugin can post tweets from that account.

This is an extract of a professional version of the WordPress File Upload plugin. It contains JavaScript code that enables the recording of video and audio streams from the device's webcam and mic.

It uses the latest HTML5 technology, like the getUserMedia function, and promises to achieve it. However, it also contains fallback mechanisms for compatibility with old browsers, mobile phones, and Internet Explorer.

This article explains how to implement Google reCAPTCHA inside a WordPress plugin without keys. Usually, public and private keys are required to use Google reCAPTCHA, which are taken from the website.

When Google issued version 1, it allowed developers to issue global keys when using reCAPTCHA in their plugins. So, when these plugins were installed on users' websites, the users did not have to issue their own keys. When Google issued version 2, which is safer and easier to use, it withdrew the ability to issue global keys. Thus, this article explains how developers can implement version 2 of Google reCAPTCHA without requiring users to issue their own keys. Google reCAPTCHA without keys is an exciting yet experimental technology.

It is fully implemented in the pro version of the WordPress File Upload plugin.

Nonapolytox was the European Union research project that ran between 2010 to 2013 and examined the effects of nanomaterials. I developed its website using WordPress.

The website had to generate dynamic reports in Excel, Microsoft Word, and PDF on the results of the experiments conducted by the scientists. To do this, I developed a custom plugin. At that time, there were no efficient tools to generate Excel, Microsoft Word, and PDF documents with PHP. So, whenever a user requested a report, the plugin transferred the required data using REST to another Windows server. This is where a custom application I developed in Delphi received and processed data, generated a requested file, and returned it to the WordPress website. There were a lot of challenges to making this mechanism work reliably because the Windows application required a lot of time to generate the files.

DELOS was a European project that ran between 2013 and 2015 and related to developing an e-learning platform for the operation and management of biogas production units.

I developed the project's main website with WordPress and the e-learning platform with Canvas LMS, one of the most well-known LMS platforms, written with Ruby on Rails.

A European research project that ran between 2019 and 2022 aimed to develop an interface between transmission and distribution system operators and energy grids.

The project included a tendering platform so that companies and universities could submit proposals and get funding through the project to develop IT tools for energy grids.

I developed the tendering platform using WordPress, a custom theme, and a custom plugin. The tendering platform allowed applicants to register, download all necessary documents, submit their proposals, resubmit if they wanted, and download their final proposals. It also permitted admin users to control and manage applicant companies and users.

The whole platform was developed as a product to be replicated, allowing the same tendering platform to be used in European research projects ONENET and BD4NRG.

My team and I developed the RegCom platform for Grant Thornton, Greece. It is based on WordPress. I created all the main features of the platform using a custom plugin and a custom theme.

Implementing an internal search engine that would perform free-text searches in PDF documents was the most challenging part. The whole operation was done using PHP and JavaScript. No third-party online services were used. A user performs a free-text search and gets a list of matched PDF documents like Google Books search. The user sees the excerpt that contains the search keywords with the latter being highlighted.

The platform can also display the whole PDF document to the user with the search keywords highlighted in the PDF. Again, this is done entirely using PHP and JavaScript without third-party online services.

After the initial implementation of the platform, we decided to modernize the front end and experiment with a WordPress API, so we implemented the front end using React and WordPress as a back-end environment. All the exchange of information between the front and back ends was done using a WordPress REST API.

The project is still ongoing.

During my occupation in Intracom Telecom SA, I took over the technical leadership of Smart Policing project.
The project was about the development of an advanced search engine for Hellenic Police, where policemen would be able to perform identification of persons, vehicles and other objects from their mobile phones, either by textual search, or fingerprint scanning or face recognition.
I led five different teams who took over the development of the various parts of the system.
The core system, the search engine, was development with Java and it was able to perform mass searches to over 50 databases of Hellenic Police, other Greek Ministries and international databases through Web Services. It was also integrated with a 3rd party face recognition system, as well as the fingerprint recognition system of Hellenic Police.
The clients, from where policemen conducted searches were mobile phones and browsers. So, native Android (Java for Android) and iOS (Swift) clients were developed, as well as a web client (React).
Besides the technical leadership, I also designed the whole system, I defined all the REST and SOAP specs of the web services and I also set up the whole test environment (a digital twin of Hellenic Police infrastructure).

During my occupation in Grant Thornton Greece as the Director of Engineering, I took over, as Technical Leader, the development of GoBeyond platform.
The platform was a web-based Information System, from where large enterprises could submit loan applications.
The platform was a Business Process Management (BPM) system and it was developed with Java 11 Spring Boot, using Flowable opensource. Flowable is a BPM framework developed with Java Spring Boot.
I led three different teams, who took over the development of the platform (one backend team and two frontend teams).
Besides my leadership role, I performed a lot of coding. Flowable opensource has an old frontend on AngularJS. I made the necessary modifications so that it is integrated with React. I also integrate it with Keycloak and LDAP.
This was the first time we used Flowable and there was no experience from the team. So I had to learn it, do the necessary customizations and then train my team to follow up.
In addition, I extended Keycloak through Service Provider Interfaces (SPIs) so that it can send SMS messages during user registration.
I also performed almost all devops tasks (setting of the development, testing and also production environments and CI/CD operations).

During my occupation at Grant Thornton Greece as Director of Engineering I took over as Technical Manager the development of a web-based platform for Vodafone Hellas, that would allow its customers to request coupons for digital services, in the frame of RRF (a European fund for assisting Members States to recover from COVID).
The platform was developed with Java Spring Boot using Flowable opensource. I took over almost all development, backend and frontend, due to lack of resources at that time.
I integrated Flowable with Keycloak and LDAP, as well as with external services of the Ministry of Finance. I also integrated it with Marmelab, an admin framework in NodeJS and Wordpress.
The frontend was developed with AngularJS, which I mixed with React and MaterialUI components to improve the look and feel.
I also performed all devops tasks (setup of development, UAT and production environments and all CI/CD scripts).