Linux and PHP web application support and development (Bromsgrove, UK)

Examples of Our Work

National Food Hygiene Ratings Website

Scores On The Doors is a national public information service from which you can find the official local authority hygiene ratings for food businesses. In addition to the public side of the site, the application provides numerous “behind the scenes” functions – such as reporting, certificate generation, RSS feeds and a SOAP or JSON API for external entities to consume / use data from the site.

We “inherited” the code base from the previous development company, and have provided telephone support, ongoing maintenance and implementation of new features as required.

As a brief summary, and in no particular order, we have :

  • Added RSS feeds, allowing an end user to be notified of new inspections within an authority’s area.
  • Linked premises to their Facebook, Google Places and FourSquare entities (allowing users to see reviews/feedback via these sites).
  • Integrated the Solr search engine into the site to provide a “more Google like” search experience than is possible with MySQL (more details)
  • Enhanced the reporting facilities for clients
  • Refactored the backend database to improve performance, scalability and data integrity.
  • Provide search suggestions to end users to help discover businesses (e.g. spelling corrections, geo-location radius changes etc)
  • Developed an API for use by the mobile applications
  • iPhone application development.
  • Android application development.
  • Security improvements.
  • Search engine optimisations (SEO).
  • Performance optimisations
  • Automated unit tests (PHPUnit, Selenium) and Continuous Integration (Jenkins) to enhance quality, support maintenance and reduce regressions or old defects re-appearing
  • Re-structuring of the code base to improve future development speed
  • Load adaptive – helping the site cope during sudden traffic spikes (like being mentioned on TV’s The Food Inspectors) while also offering the best experience possible to users.
  • Introduced a job queue to avoid long running web requests blocking the end user – like when running a report consisting of 500,000 records

Over the years, we’ve introduced/used the following technologies on the site:

PHP5.4, Zend Framework, Jenkins (CI), PHPUnit, Smarty, Propel, MySQL, SOAP, Google Maps, Facebook FQL, Objective C, Java, Javascript/ECMAScript (primarily jQuery), Google Places API, FourSquare API, Gearman and Solr

3D Print World

Creation of a bespoke e-commerce website and hosting for 3d printworld, using :

  • Solr for document indexing and search
  • Zend Framework 2
  • Twig (templating layer)
  • Integrated Content Management System
  • Integrated forum
  • Shopping cart and eCommerce capability via PayPal.

Digital Signage Platform

A bespoke platform for a client allowing for the storage and distribution of digital adverts (video, pictures) to display devices.

An example of usage would be within a supermarket where a playlist would be created for the bakery aisle which would allow for variation of media based on audience demographic, while a different playlist and set of media is used for devices within the dairy aisle and so on.

The system is designed to support an unlimited number of clients in a secure and bandwidth efficient manner.

Future work should see facial recognition being integrated to provide better analytics reporting and media selection/variation.

Model Farm

Model Farm is a co-operative society of farmers selling organic produce. They approached us looking for a new website and improved online shop.

We :

  • Migrated their website and data from classic ASP to WordPress, allowing them to author content on the site
  • Implemented a bespoke WordPress plugin to provide a shopping cart to fit their requirements and existing workflow

Anorak

Anorak is a relatively high traffic ‘news’ website, based on WordPress which often has in excess of 50,000 visitors per day.

Due to the nature of the site, it frequently experiences load spikes as new stories are posted or articles go viral.

The site is based on WordPress Content management and Publishing Platform.

We’ve provided :

  • Integration with Social Media (Facebook, Twitter, Buzz etc.).
  • Redevelopment of the theme to make it more mobile friendly and responsive.
  • Systems administration (backups, monitoring, performance tuning).
  • WordPress optimisations and performance improvements.
  • WordPress maintenance and support.
  • Custom WordPress integration and plugin development
  • Bespoke PHP and Javascript development.

CCApps / Lease-Desk

We created and maintain a Leasing Portfolio Management solution which is designed specifically to generate sales and improve the management of agreements between a leasing company and it’s customers.

This project is written entirely in the Zend Framework, and includes a powerful, responsive user interface and extensive reporting capabilities with in-line bar charts, pie charts and PDF generation.

The application has an extensive permissions hierarchy, and makes use of remote web services (eg. Credit Safe) and integrate with other products (e.g. SalesForce).

  • Thorough unit test coverage and continuous integration via Jenkins.
  • PHP 5.3+
  • Integration with remote APIs (SalesForce.com, Funders, SOAP, XML over SOAP)
  • Zend Framework.
  • MySQL
  • Gearman job queueing

Authentic Holidays

Authentic Holidays provide holiday apartment and property rental in Italy, France and the UK. We inherited the code base from the existing developer, and we have:

  • Performed extensive re-factoring of the code base to enhance robustness.
  • Increased code reuse.
  • Enhanced search engine optimisation (SEO).
  • Integrated third party affiliates with the site (REST/XMLRPC API integration) to provide a larger selection of properties.
  • Migrated sites to a dedicated server to enhance performance and site robustness.

PDSA Data Warehousing

Pale Purple worked with the PDSA to produce a data consolidation system allowing for easy interrogation of data from the various distributed silo-ed databases at each pet hospital. To date the system has currently been running for over six years.

Technologies used:

  • Python,
  • PHP,
  • Perl,
  • Smarty,
  • MySQL