Woolwich Web Works is the freelance business of Liam and Megan McDermott. We are centrally located in the small town of Elmira, Ontario (near Kitchener/Waterloo), Canada and work for clients in Canada, the US, UK, and wherever you are.
A small team that can do big things
Despite only being a small team, we have tackled some large projects. There are two ways this is possible:
- Using readily available software building blocks, made by a community of developers (open source)
- There is an optimal size for software teams that tends toward smallness, and simply adding more people to a project does not speed it up.
Using open source software enables us to be bigger than a two-person team. Drupal, an open source content management tool, does all the routine parts of building a website for us. This makes it possible for a small team to build big projects at minimal cost.
While Drupal is great, it is not the best fit for every problem, we have been getting off the island with technologies like Node.js, Haskell, Purescript and decoupling with front-end frameworks like React or using just vanilla JavaScript.
Even as we expand, we value the advantages of a flat management structure. Lean economic times mean your suppliers should be lean too, we will ensure budgets will be spent on the real work required to complete projects and not on overheads.
Our experience
Between us, we have over 40 years experience in web design and development. Our skills are complementary, and cover a broad range of web design and development requirements. If we don't have the expertise ourselves, we may assign work to a carefully screen subcontractor or connect you with someone who does.
What makes us different
Through all of these years working in web development we learned many lessons from both successful and unsuccessful projects.
- An agile, collaborative process. Your team is involved at each stage of the process, helping to improve results and reduce costs.
- Usability matters. Both for visitors to the site, and your content producers, we want to make sure your site is easy to use.
- Solutions that suit your budget
- Continuous evaluation: what's working, what's not? Using Analytics, user feedback, and other methods to ensure site is working well for users and meeting its goals. We provide ongoing support and maintenance, with progressive improvements to your site.
Our Team
Liam and Megan McDermott met on a web development forum in the mid-2000's. Since then, we have been working together to develop website solutions.
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Liam McDermott specializes in backend web development using PHP, Haskell, Node.js, or whichever language suits the project. He is also skilled at what is known as "Dev-ops": configuring server infrastructure, managing code repositories, and deploying code changes through development, staging, and production environments. All of this means that we can make ongoing changes and improvements to your project without disruptions.
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Megan McDermott is an expert in front-end web development (HTML & CSS), Drupal site building, and user experience design. She is particularly interested in merging the needs of website visitors with your business goals.