About

A bit about myself.

I’m Marcell Purham, a 20 year old freelance ruby on rails developer currently living in Wheaton IL. Welcome to my portfolio! Down below are some interesting things about me that you may find useful, if deciding to hire or work with me.

My Story

I started designing at the age of 13. I’ve been designing and developing websites since 2006. My passion for the web has grown over the years and has taken me on a quite the interesting journey. I have worked for many interesting individuals and companies and have proven myself to be able to complete mostly any task thrown my way. When I am not designing or coding I am usually away from the computer screen skateboarding with friends or trying to relax.

2006

I started editing myspace pictures for friends and family members. At this time I was not charging since I was learning photoshop, but I continued to make custom pics for them.

2007

I started creating custom myspace layouts for friends and family members. I would create the design first in photoshop then slice it and finally code the design for myspace. I started to become familiar with html and was getting the hang of coding.

2008

I had a good grasp of html but not css. During 2008 I started to learn css and continued to add new things that I was learning to my websites. I wanted to create a website where I would not have to custom code each blog post and that is when I discovered WordPress. I started to learn WordPress and more css. I would combine my html and css together to create very basic wordpress themes.

2009

I continued to work with wordpress, css, html, and began learning php. I familiarize myself with the code by constantly working with it and started to know wordpress a lot more. Later that year I started a blog called Webdevtuts(Sold September of 2011) where I would teach others cool web development and design tutorials. My goal with this website was to teach others how to design and code. Since I did not have anyone at the time who was there to answer my questions etc I created something where others could come and receive answers.

2010

I continued to write tutorials and broaden my knowledge with WordPress. I got my first internship at deep interactive where I would help code and create themes for clients. After proving I was able to handle workload I was offered a job with deep interactive as lead front end developer.

2011

In 2011 I was very interested in continuing my path to fully learning php, so I began working with Drupal Content Management System. WordPress was great, but at the time there were no custom post types nor all the functionality that drupal offered. After learning drupal, to the point where I could create fully functional websites, I was hired at straight-north where I worked on a team with 1 front-end developer and 2 back-end developers(php). During my summer there I completed 3 drupal websites, and worked on various projects. After I began college for the fall semester, I ended up selling Webdevtuts after 2 years of constantly writing top notch content. I had written over 90+ tutorials and posts and also reached my goal of making webdevtuts rank under 100,000 out of all the websites in the world. After selling webdevtuts I was now able to fully focus on doing what I love. CODING! After working with php I wanted to take on something new so I started learning ruby on rails.

2012

As the new year entered I continued to learn ruby on rails and started to create applications of my own. I am fully comfortable with rails and am excited to launch a new web app late this summer. I’ve attended startupweekend and meetups where I got the opportunity to meet other developers and individuals who are interested in technology & startups.

This about sums it up for now, if you are interested in learning more about me feel free to ask me via @marcellpurham, or via email. I hope to work with you on your new awesome project.

Testimonials

Marcell did a great job designing two websites for me. He is extremely knowledgeable of web page content and formatting. I was grateful that he could take my ideas and make them make sense on the screen! Marcell is extremely professional and services the customer well. I would by happy to utilize his services again.
- Audra Davis