M atthew Mason

Web Developer.

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me@mtthwmsn.co.uk LinkedIn
Matthew Mason Profile Picture

Hi there.

I’m Matthew Mason - father of 2, drinker of rum and Senior Production Engineer at Difford’s Guide.

I promise not to put you through any more unnecessary scrolling.


This page is very much a work in progress - check back frequently for updates.

Difford’s Guide.

I’m a Senior Production Engineer at Difford’s Guide - one of the world’s most popular drinks related websites, consistently ranking in the top 100,000 (1) sites.

We’re a small company with many facets, including but not limited to:

  • Cocktail Recipes - our database boasts over 6,000 searchable cocktails and mixed drinks(2).
  • E-commerce - as well as integration with third parties such as Amazon and The Whisky Exchange(3), we've recently started selling direct to our customers(4).
  • Community-oriented - the Cocktail Builder(5) is a hub for our users allowing them to make comments, favourite and rate recipes, and even submit their own recipes for publication on site.
  • Multi Lingual - we have partners in numerous countries who have published content in their own language.

We employ an Agile approach to development rolling out features incrementally, updating and improving based on feedback from the people who use our website.

My roles and responsibilities at Difford’s Guide vary from day to day depending on the needs of the business. This has given me hands-on industry experience in a wide range of fields from UI/UX design and development, to migrating functionality and data from a legacy part of the site.

Skills, technologies and experience

Frontend

Javascript, Sass/CSS3, HTML5, UI Design, Adobe CC Suite

Backend

PHP, MySQL, MongoDB

DevOps

AWS, Docker, Ubuntu, Nagios, Google Analytics
Cocktail Builder Screenshot

Cocktail Builder.

Visit site Ongoing development

Skills, technologies and experience

Frontend

Javascript, Sass/CSS3, HTML5

Backend

PHP, MySQL, MongoDB

The Cocktail Builder is the central hub for our users’ interactive experience on Difford’s Guide.

Key features of the Cocktail Builder include:

  • Submit your own cocktail recipes for publication on Difford’s Guide.
  • Your personal 'cabinet', containing all the bottles and ingredients you have at home
  • A searchable list of recipes you can make with the ingredients you have
  • A record of your favourite recipes and ingredients
Jake Seal iPhone Screenshot

Jake Seal Photography.

Visit site Updated May 2017

Jake Seal is a freelance photographer specialising in interiors and still life photography. This website focuses on three main themes: Skateboard, People and Places.

Jake's photography speaks for itself and it was important that I kept it that way

With the above in mind, my main goals when designing and building this website were:

  • Clean and minimal aesthetics that do not detract from the content
  • Responsive design that works effectively across all devices
  • Optimised content delivery for mobile by lazy loading photos on demand

Over 7 years industry experience.

PHP

MVC architectures, Object oriented programming

Database

MySQL, MongoDB

Javascript

Vanilla, jQuery

UI/UX

Responsive design with a mobile-first approach

CSS3

Sass, BEM

HTML5

Semantic markup, SEO optimisation, W3C valid

Adobe CC Suite

Illustrator, Photoshop

AWS

EC2, S3, CloudFront, IAM, Route 53

Agile Development

Git, CI/CD, Peer review

Monitoring

Syslog, Nagios, CloudWatch, Google Analytics

Web Server

LAMP, EC2, Docker, Ubuntu, Apache

Utility

Crontab, NPM, Grunt, Bash

BSc University of Bradford

2:1 in Computer Animation and Special Effects

Team Player

Friendly, helpful and adaptive. Forthcoming with ideas and suggestions, willing speak up if I think there’s an issue.

Silver IV

My current rank in League of Legends(6). I'm not very good.