Nicholas J. LaPrell

Summary

Experienced Web developer specializing in both client and server-side scripting and architecture. Upholds industry web standards and best practices. Natural ability to improve work flow process to reduce maintenance and design time. Adaptable to new technologies and frameworks and eager to apply new knowledge. Experience with e-commerce, AJAX, SEO, and UI design. Comfortable with both self-directed and templated design, working within a group or solo. Experience in training and mentoring colleagues on new technologies.

Skills include:

• PHP
• JavaScript
• MySQL
• (X)HTML
• Perl/Mason

• CSS
• XML
• Apache 2
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

• Omniture®
• Google Analytics
• API Design
• UI Design

• PHP
• JavaScript
• MySQL
• (X)HTML
• Perl/Mason
• CSS
• XML
• Apache 2

• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
• Omniture® Site Catalyst
• Omniture® Test&Target
• Google Analytics
• Section 508 Compliance
• API Design
• UI Design

• Windows
• Linux
• Paintshop Pro
• Photo Shop
• Gimp
• Microsoft Office
• Open Office

Experience

Jupiterimages, Tucson, Arizona 2007 - Present

Web Developer/Designer

 

Job Description:

Upgrade and maintain company e-commerce sites including Photos.com, Animation Factory, Clipart.com, and StockXpert. Locate and integrate relevant platforms and libraries to increase performance and decrease design time.

Accomplishments:

• Integrated the jQuery JavaScript library and designed a plugin platform, drastically reducing design time while increasing site performance.
• Increased SEO page-rank by applying meta data and designing a user and search engine friendly category page.
• Designed an AJAX solution for username availability and validation during the registration process.
• Designed an extensible JavaScript form validation routine for order forms, portable to all sites.
• Redesigned a 5 page purchase flow into a single page using an intuitive and animated tabbed interface.

AOL, LLC., Tucson, Arizona 1999 - 2007

Senior QA Software Engineer2005 - 2007

 

Job Description:

Upgrade and maintain the department website. Design tools to maximize work-flow. Establish department technology standards. Train and mentor colleagues on pertinent technological skills and standards.

Accomplishments:

• Delivered a UI and back-end redesign of the website with no direction and vague requirements, resulting in positive comments from public, internal users, and management.
• Designed a new user-friendly tool to build XML driven public facing forms to collect project feedback data and publish them to the AOL Beta website. Time required to publish feedback forms was further reduced from 20 minutes to 3 minutes (average).
• Optimized the page load time of the site using industry standard optimization techniques reducing 56K page loads from 45 seconds to 15 seconds.
• Updated the site code for search engine optimization (SEO) standards, increasing the Google site rank from 5 to 7 and doubling search engine traffic to the site.

QA Software Engineer2000 - 2005

 

Job Description:

Facilitate the public beta testing of AOL software through online instruction and interaction with public beta testers.

Accomplishments:

• Designed a content management system to reduce the time and technical knowledge required to publish content, resulting in an estimated annual budget cost savings of $300,000.
• Designed a tool to build public facing data collection forms, reducing the time required to publish forms from an average of 4 hours to 20 minutes.
• Successfully facilitated multiple projects at the same time, resulting in the exposure and repair of high level bugs.
• Designed host code deployed to fix a high level bug on the day of a public release.
• Created advanced processes using FDO (proprietary scripting language) to collect detailed client data upon submission of a user reports to track commonalities of reported issues.
• Facilitated and led the migration of the online beta testing site from proprietary code accessible from within the AOL client software to the open web by designing and implementing new code and framework, leading to a faster and more flexible process by which to publish content.
• Trained the department on HTML and CSS required to publish project pages, creating a greater number of resources capable of publishing and enabling the department to more easily handle a larger number of projects.

Customer Service Consultant1999 - 2000

 

Job Description:

Provide technical support to AOL members based on a wide variety of systems and software.

Accomplishments:

• Maintained an exhaustive knowledge of AOL client software and operating systems, including Windows and mobile platforms. This brought about an ability to better troubleshoot problems and have an effective solution on hand quickly.
• Maintained a competitively low call time through call control techniques and efficient troubleshooting, resulting in the ability to take more calls per day.
• Maintained a customer satisfaction rate above 95% and a first time fix rate above 90%.

Education

Bachelor's of Science in Information Technology
University of Phoenix in Phoenix, Arizona

Addendum

An online portfolio including sample code is available at: http://nick.laprell.org/portfolio.