Making digital things
We specialise in:
Web Development
James has been working on the web since 1997. Over that time, he has built up considerable technical expertise, but also an understanding of what works, and what is important. Recently, he has developed a series of sites using Kirby CMS and the 11ty static site generator but has a full understanding of all aspects of web development, and is happy to use whatever tools are appropriate to the job at hand.
Our approach is as follow:
- a preference to make things by hand
- keeping things as simple as we can
- thinking carefully about content and use of language as well as design and code
- focusing super-hard on performance - particularly in an environmental/energy/carbon context
Examples of our work
Natural Entrepreneurs (2023)
Careful Digital is a partner on this major EU-funded project. Natural Entrepreneurs is aimed at students across Europe, in the age range of 14 to 18 years. It is designed to introduce them to biomimicry – the identification of solutions found in nature and their application to human design. The project takes students through the biomimicry design process towards the development of sustainable design solutions, and actively encourages students to collaborate. One of the project outputs Careful Digital is responsible for is the Collaboration Platform; a website allowing students to work through the biomimicry design process in teams, accrue appreciation points, contribute to The Commons (a resource centre) and comment on other Teams’ ideas.
You can see the Natural Entrepreneurs website at https://natent.eu
Biolearn (2023)
Careful Digital created this website with a Kirby CMS for the EU Erasmus+ funded Biolearn for the Future project. The site works across five languages, and allows teachers to browse for biomimicry resources and register to run a Biomimicry Day in their schools.
Visit the site at https://biolearn.eu
Shropshire Botanical Society (2022)
Careful Digital was delighted to deliver a website for the Shropshire Botanical Society to allow access to the Society's botanical records.
You can see the Shropshire Botanical Society botanical records website at https://flora.shropshirebotany.org.uk .
Change the Story (2022)
Careful Digital is a partner on this major EU-funded project which brings together pupils in schools across Europe to create digital stories about climate change. One of the outputs of the project Careful Digital are responsible for is the development of a website to celebrate those stories. It allow visitors to search through and view the stories created, and hopefully be inspired to create their own stories.
We worked with Martin Wright on the design of the site.
We also created and hosted a Moodle learning environment for teachers for the schools involved in the trial.
You can see the Change the Story Celebration website at https://stories.changethestory.eu
The Urban Science website (2019)
I created a website for the Urban Science EU project. The landing page for the project is at https://urbanscience.eu and the UK website is at https://urbanscience.eu/uk/. We did a lot of thinking about language and content for this website - how do we make the project relevant and exciting to it's main audience, teachers?
Technical: This website was created using the Umbraco content management system, in which James is a Certified Expert.
The Real World Learning Network website (2016-7)
This website supported the Real World Learning EU project. It is online at https://www.rwlnetwork.org/
Technical: The website were created using the Umbraco content management system, in which James was a Certified Expert. One of the exciting challenges was the RWL model https://www.rwlnetwork.org/rwl-model.aspx which features a hand design which brings the model to life. It was great fun working with Shrewsbury-based designer Martin Wright on this - Martin did a great job with the front-end design.
The Field Studies Council websites (2002-2017)
Between 2002 and 2017, I developed the main and various resources websites for the Field Studies Council. The main FSC website was large, including thousands of pages, and was updated by staff across the charity's 20 locations. The site included bespoke ecommerce functionality allowing for the booking of courses and purchase of publications.
There were many other sites I was involved in during this period. Amongst them were:
- The Slapton Ley NNR website at https://slnnr.org.uk/
- The Seashore website at https://www.theseashore.org.uk/
- The Life in Freshwater website at https://www.lifeinfreshwater.org.uk/
- Eco Challenge, Eco Challenge Xtra, the Biodiversity Training Project, Invertebrate Challenge - all now sadly lost from the internet
Technical: These websites were created using the Umbraco content management system, in which James was a Certified Expert. The bespoke ecommerce functionality on the main FSC site was developed in C# using MVC. The functionality was designed to be highly modular, using dependency injection. This allowed for unit testing of individual elements of the system, and for modules to be swapped in and out for testing and the outsourcing of work.
The London Challenge New Views website (2006-7)
The London Challenge News View project allowed thousands of pupils at inner-city London schools to participate in residential experiences. I created the website for this project, which allowed schools to book with providers. The project ran across a number of major providers, including the Field Studies Council, PGL, YHA, who were able to make their residential experiences available to schools through the website. It was an amazing project to work on.
You can see an archived version of the site at https://web.archive.org/web/20070630101916/http://www.newviews.org.uk/
The ANC website (1998-9)
This was my first commercial website - started in 1998. It was for the parcel company ANC, a truly dreadful first job (I could tell you some stories), but I learnt a lot. The website won an award, I later found out.
Technical: The site was made with Microsoft Active Server pages. I made the - then controversial - decision to use stylesheets. The site was built using frames but there was a non-frames version (I'd forgotten that - oh my lord.)
You can see an archived version of the site at https://web.archive.org/web/20070630101916/http://www.newviews.org.uk/
Reporting and Data work
James has been working with reporting systems and data since his first commerical job in 1998. We have the following areas of expertise:
- Data analysis and report creating (using SQL, or PowerBI)
- Data migration (using MySQL or SQL Server)
- Data quality work (using MySQL or SQL Server)
Examples of our work
The FSC data hub (2019-20)
We created a data hub, pulling both historical data from FSC's legacy system and from their new bookings management system, and set up a series of reports via PowerBI.
Technical: This involved restructing data from a MySQL database and integrating the data into a SQL Server dataset.
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