You can read my 2012 summary here.

Two thousand and thirteen has been a very a pretty good yeah for me. It’s been around 16 months since I graduated from university and I’ve made some pretty significant progress with my career. The following blog posts highlights the highs – and lows – of my year!

Job

I left my first job at MadeByPi early January in order to take up a new role at McCann Manchester.  McCann are one of the biggest advertising companies in the world so although I was incredibly anxious at the time, I was confident it was a step in the right direction.

I’m delighted to say that I definitely made the right choice.  McCann is a fantastic company and my workplace is pure class, I wrote a post explaining why. My work has been varied and I’m been responsible for some very big projects.

My code has improved massively, especially my JS. I’m very happy at McCann. My workplace combined with great projects and lovely colleagues means that I really enjoy going to work each day.

Freelance

At the start of 2013 I redesigned my Webknit site (it’s since been redesigned) and the response to it was phenomenal. It was featured on multiple inspiration sites, blogs and articles. Amazingly I was also lucky enough to be nominated for the .Net awards in the ‘best online portfolio’ category.

This nomination has to be the most significant achievement of my life and most certainly my year. Although I managed to get into the final three, I was deservedly beaten by this wizard. I wasn’t bothered about losing as the experience in itself was amazing. It totally inspired me to keep on doing what I’m doing. This time last year I was borderline obsessed with everything web and I’m quite chuffed to say that this hasn’t slackened at all. If anything I’m even more obsessed. I’ve made so many more projects and my portfolio is looking pretty decent.

Since the awards I have embarked upon some great freelance projects including Uplifting stories, Western isles Cruises and Beardrevered.

My resources website, Worthy of Note is more popular than ever and I really enjoy researching and showcasing the resources each day, it has worked wonders for my online reputation. It’s mostly for my benefit and I think it’s this website that ensures my passion for the web remains strong. The front-end template I made has improved significantly and is now used on almost all of my web projects, it has also been downloaded over 2.5k times. This blog is my escape from the web whilst still being on the web. My spelling and grammar has improved a little and I really enjoy writing now, something I was convinced I would never appreciate whilst at university.

Numbers

Here’s the figures from this year’s Google Analytics.

webknit.co.uk

• Pageviews 144k
• Visits 69k
• Unique 52k

shaneprendergast.co.uk

• Pageviews 138k
• Visits 34k
• Unique 26k

worthyofnote.co.uk

• Pageviews 82k
• Visits 19k
• Unique 12k

base.webknit.co.uk

• Pageviews 14k
• Visits 10k
• Unique 8k

Over 350k page views which I am immensely proud of! I’ve some more side projects in the works so keep an eye out for those. I’m really excited about launching them before summer.

Aims from 2012….

My aims for 2012 were :-

• Continue to develop my skills and broaden my knowledge pushing me out of the “junior” zone and into a competent front-end developer
• Write at least one blog post a month.
• Fully get to grips with LESS and SASS
• Develop my JS/jQuery skills so I can write fluently without any reference
• Improve my writing skills and stop writing how I talk!

I have most certainly improved as a web developer and designer over the last year. I am far, far better than I was a year ago. I’m still currently in a junior position and I’m relatively content with this, as I’ve stepped up to a higher level at McCann.

I’m writing fairly frequently. I’ve certainly wrote more than 12 articles this year. So I’m please to say I’ve passed that one too!

I’m pretty experienced with CSS extension languages and I use SASS on most of my freelance projects. However as with anything there is always more to learn. It would be nice to get to grips with some more complex aspects of these languages.

I’ve come a long way with my JS and I’m pretty nifty at making things move and minor functionality. I’m steadily improving and I’ve some nice personal projects coming that will involve some more technical JS.

My writing has improved tenfold. So too has my spelling and grammar. I’m never going to be an English teacher but at least I’ve captured the basics!

New aims

So I’m pleased to say I’ve pretty much fore filled every aim I set last year. So what now about this year? It’s tricky and I’m going to only set myself a few…

Aims for 2014

• Improvement on JS. More than just basic jquery and swapping classes I need to be writing more complex, technical code.
• At least three new open source projects. I’ve got the ideas now I need to find the time!
• To improve my design skills, mainly in illustrator. Experiment with different designs and at least one dribbble shot a month.

Happy new year to all my web friends.

Shane

• Me
• Personal
• WebKnit