About Simon Johnstone

• Web Design
  • David Brown
  • Portfolio
• Web Development
  • Classic ASP
  • PHP
• SEO
  • Rankings
• Biography
  • CV Word

My name is Simon Johnstone and I am 28 years old. I’m a freelance web developer and search engine optimiser and I specialise in PHP, HTML, CSS, SEO and PPC.

I have been playing with the web since my second year at university in 2001 when I had a module which taught me basic HTML and Classic ASP. I am mainly developing my sites now in HTML, CSS and PHP but I have a long way to go to get to the standard that I would like to be at.

Since my first introduction into web programming back in 2001 I have mainly taught myself by using books and internet resources to get to the standard that I have today. I am currently working towards the ZEND PHP Certification as I feel a qualification will help prove to me and potential clients that I can do what I say and think I can.

I graduated from Manchester Business School in 2003 with a second class honours degree in Business Information Technology. After leaving university I was lucky to get a job almost straight away working as web designer for a local company in Huddersfield. However the company went into administration and eventually out of business and I found myself unemployed. This led me to working at the Post Office as a postman for 2 years. Despite this job being what I wanted to do I think it has really helped me develop both as a persona and professionally especially the long afternoons I spent relearning and learning new web programming skills.

I currently work for David Brown in Huddersfield and I manage three websites for the company and its sister companies Benzlers and Cone Drive. The websites have all been redesigned by me and I am proud to say that I have increased the number of hits to the sites and the number of leads to the site despite the company cutting back its spending by Adwords spending by about $17,000.

The success of the above sites as also enabled me to create a fourth website www.swiftdistributors.com for the company which was a good starting point for me to really start using the PHP skills I have started to learn.