— About —

Hi, I’m Ben — a freelance website designer and developer based in Manchester, UK. I’ve been tinkering with and building websites and tools since the early days of the internet.

My love for website design and development began when I was around nine years old. Back in the late 1990s I built my very first website whilst at primary school for a clan in a game called Delta Force: Land Warrior, and from that moment I was hooked. I’ve always been fascinated by how the web makes information accessible to everyone, and by the creativity and problem-solving involved in designing great user experiences.

Over the years I’ve watched the web evolve from the days of Flash animations, Microsoft FrontPage and XHTML to the modern world of HTML5, CSS, and powerful web applications. I’ve lived through Yahoo’s GeoCities, 50webs’ free hosting phenomenon, the rise of WordPress and open-source CMS platforms, the fall of Flash and the birth of HTML5, the jQuery era of Ajax-driven interactivity, the responsive web revolution brought on by smartphones, and the shift toward cloud hosting, modern JavaScript frameworks, and globally distributed infrastructure.

And for those who were there… yes, I also endured the era where we had to wrestle with cross-browser compatibility and write special comments and code just to make things render correctly in Internet Explorer. That constant evolution — and the ingenious solutions developers create along the way — is something I still enjoy being part of today.

Due to a chronic health condition I’m not always able to take on client work, but when health allows I occasionally accept small, carefully managed projects. Much of my current focus is on developing SaaS tools and plugins, such as my JiffyTrade Business Manager plugin for WordPress – a tool built specifically for tradesmen, sole traders, freelancers and/or small service businesses; allowing you to create estimates, quotes, and invoices, manage customers, track expenses and receipts, store third-party certificates and guarantees, and generate professional PDFs — all from within WordPress itself.

If you’d like to see what I’ve built, feel free to explore my portfolio — or get in touch.

Origins & Early Recognition

Early milestones in my journey that helped shaped this website and how I design…

My Design Philosophy

My approach is called Narrative-led Interface Design (NLID).

My web design process typically starts with a central concept, carried through the entire interface — from layout and interaction to branding and microcopy.

The result is a website that feels consistent, structured, and purposeful, not just visually appealing.

Because good design isn’t solely about how something looks — it’s about how clearly it works and how well it performs.