Thomas Joyce’s Web Programming Portfolio

(note that this document was created with the intention of printed form and later converted for web using just Microsoft Word. I may create a better, more flashy portfolio in the future; sorry for the inconvenience!)

Since early childhood, I have always had an interest in computers - not only using them, but also understanding how they work and how to program them. Although I have spent most of my life dealing with web programming using HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, and MySQL databases, I also have experience in Java and C++, and some experience with Flash and ASP.

I can credit my beginnings in computing to my father, Dr. Daniel T. Joyce, who teaches Computer Science at Villanova University. Thanks to him, our home was one of the earlier “computer-equipped” households in our area, and I was definitely the first of my friends and acquaintances to have a computer all to myself in my room. I remember sitting on my dad’s lap while he used his external dialup modem to check his email.

Upon entering Bishop Shanahan High School I quickly became acquainted with the school's Technology Coordinator, Dr. Joseph Martino. Since I was unemployed during the summer of 2005, I spent 7-8 hours a day, 5 days a week at the high school doing volunteer work: helping Dr. Martino set up computers for the next year and fixing ones that did not work. I also spend many hours every school year helping with technology issues (network issues, virus removal, etc.) at school.

During my freshman year of high school, a colleague of my mother's, Mrs. Powell, decided to create a web site of resource links for language arts teachers. She hired me on a provisional basis to do the technical design/implementation of the site and was so pleased with my work that she awarded me a contract to complete the job. The site can be found at http://www.languageartslinks.com/.

In addition to what you see when you visit the site, I created a complete administrative interface, so that Mrs. Powell can manage the entire site by herself without having to do any "programming". I've attached some screen shots of the site and the administrative interface.

I have been the president for 3 years running of the Bishop Shanahan High School's Web Site Club. As a representative of the club, I have entered the county level of the Pennsylvania Computer Fair several times. Judging is based mostly on how attractive and colorful the submitted web sites appear. My entries did not justify any awards on those grounds. Although I did not win any awards, several of my submissions had the most complex and useful back ends (the parts the judges did not look at) of any submissions at the fair, and actually allowed the user to interact with the web site. For example, one year I built a “teacher web site”, that would allow schools to have a page for each teacher where the teacher could post homework assignments, projects, and any other notes that they wanted. The site featured PHP code and used a MySQL database to store teacher and homework information. A full administrative interface was provided for each teacher to login and add/edit/delete both the categories of their posted items and the actual posted items themselves. Although it was never used by any schools, it was fun (although a lot of work) making it. I've attached a few screen shots of this site also (a demo site is available: http://tuxhome.com/smartwork/).

I am currently working on the Capital Teas web site for a company in Annapolis, MD. It is a storefront that allows customers across the US to purchase specialty teas over the internet. The live URL is http://www.capitalteas.com/.

If you have any questions about any of my projects I'd be happy to answer them. Feel free to email me at any time at tomjoyce@gmail.com

Thanks,

Thomas E. Joyce

Screenshots:

This is the home page for a fictional, demonstrative middle school to show off the SmartWork web program I created for a computer fair.

Above is the page that a user viewing Fred Flintstone’s Biology I class would see.

Here is the page a teacher first sees when they log in.

This page allows teachers to customize the types of items they can post for all of their classes, such as homework, projects, tests, or any other upcoming event/assignment they can think of!

This page allows teachers to add, edit, or delete any items in any category of their choosing. Theoretically, an unlimited number of categories may be created, and an unlimited number of items in each category may be created.

This is the home page for LanguageArtsLinks.com, a live web site that provides a directory of resources for language arts teachers.

This is a sample of what a visitor of this web site would see under the “Books” topic, when viewing the directory “by Topic.”

Here is the first administrative page seen, when first logged in as a site administrator.

This is the page seen when editing the “Books” topic in the Topic Administrative View.