Hi there. I’m Tom Rose, a freelance web developer with over 20 years experience building websites with HTML, CSS and JavaScript. I have a strong passion for web standards, clean code and keeping things simple. I love building websites that display content clearly, load fast and are easy to navigate.
I mainly work out of my home office in West Philadelphia, but I’m always excited to join teams onsite when possible. I value face time and building transparent relationships with clients. When I take on a project as a freelancer, I come alongside an organization to understand its culture so I can best provide customized guidance and support. While my primary task is often writing solid front-end code, I also consult on design decisions, accessibility, performance and optimization. This work ethic has enabled me to work successfully on projects with dozens of amazing organizations over the years.
When I’m not working on web projects, I enjoy exploring the city of Philadelphia with my wife and son, listening to music, baking sourdough bread and learning foreign languages (Ich lerne gerade Deutsch).
Skills and tools
I often use WordPress as a content management system (CMS), building custom themes by hand with a strong focus on simplicity and usability – both for the editor and the end user. WordPress powers roughly 43% of the internet, so it’s a dependable and trusted CMS. I also have a growing interest in the Jamstack, particularly with coupling WordPress with a speedy, front-end framework (like Astro). The benefits (security, speed, etc.) of this type of headless setup are pretty significant. (This site was actually built with WordPress, GraphQL and Astro 🚀.)
Here’s a list of languages and tools I use on an almost daily basis:
- WordPress
- HTML
- CSS
- Sass
- Styled Components
- SVG
- JavaScript
- Gatsby
- Astro
- GraphQL
- REST API
- PHP
- Timber/Twig
- MySQL
- Gulp
- Git
Of course, I’m always interested in learning new things in order to optimize my workflow. Here’s what I’ve been researching and studying these days:
- Astro
- Next.js
- Zendesk theme development