About

My name is John Hughes and I am a web developer in York. This is my personal site where I write about web design and development and anything else I find interesting. It is also where I experiment with new design ideas and code. I probably update the code more often than I update the content, so expect frequent changes and more than a few rough edges.

I work at Castlegate IT, an independent web design and development company in the centre of York. I specialise in front-end code, but I also do design work and write server-side code on a regular basis. I care about web standards, accessibility, and open technologies and I always enjoy learning new things.

Before I stumbled into a career in web development, I was a plant scientist and ecologist and I am still interested in the environment and all things biological. If you are really interested in my scientific exploits, you can read my published work on fungi, more fungi, farming, and (questionably) renewable raw materials. I also spent some time in the world of sheep farming. These experiences have all been strangely useful during my time as a web developer.

Technology

When it comes to code and design, I like to take a minimalist approach. I created this site using Jekyll, a simple static site generator written in Ruby. Everything is stored in text files, so I can update the content with my favourite text editor and a bit of Markdown.

Copyright

All original design and content on this site is Copyright John Hughes and must not be used without my permission. The source code for the site itself and the code samples within the articles on this site are released under the MIT License and can be found on GitHub.