Behind The Avatar #1: Jack Franklin – 17-Year-Old Web Developer and Editor of The Web Squeeze

Today I will be starting a new feature here on the blog in which I will introduce you to people and blogs and websites who I have found to be of value to my education and life experience. Whether I follow them on Twitter or subscribe to their blog’s RSS feed or have interacted with them in some other way, these are people that I am getting to know and want to encourage you to do the same. In keeping with the spirit of previous posts on this blog, I want to try to bring to the forefront those that for one reason or another are not as well known as some of the more “popular” in their field.

This feature will appear at least once if not more per week. When I am recommending someone on Twitter it is a direct replacement of my previous #FollowFriday posts that I used to do each week, thanks to the bit I wrote a couple weeks ago about #FollowFridays Are Like Flowers At A Funeral. That got me to thinking I should recommend others as I am inspired by them, rather than waiting until Friday. Then I decided to expand outside of the Twitterverse and include many others that are becoming a part of my online life in some way.

The idea here is that there are countless avatars and websites and icons and blogs. But every single one of them has a person or people behind them. Get to know the person a little bit and you will be all the more interested and invested in what they have to say and share.

So today I am pleased to introduce you to Jack Franklin, a 17-year-old web developer who was born and raised in Falmouth, England. This young man got into coding at about 13 when his dad decided to start a part-time Web Design firm. He taught himself HTML and CSS before getting bored, and then moved onto PHP.

“I guess what I liked so much about PHP is that you know that the entire website is working on your code. It also means I can customize third-party applications much more, being able to decipher the code and then rewrite it so most times I can get anything to do exactly what I want it to (with a bit of a struggle in between, possibly!)”

Jack is currently at College studying A-Levels in Math, English and Computing in the final year of two spent at college. After Uni he doesn’t really know what he wants to do, but he’s hoping to land a job as a junior developer at a web firm or something before deciding in which direction he wants to go.

“I’ll hopefully, if my grades hit what they should, be headed up to Bath University (where the Carsonified guys hang out!) to study Computer Science there for 4 years, with one of those years being in the industry.”

Besides HTML, CSS and PHP, Jack has also taught himself Javascript, which he says “is great fun, as it gave me an excuse to play more with front-end stuff, and also led me to jQuery, one of the best Javascript libraries out there.”

Jack has recently taken the position of Editor of the magazine/blog at TheWebSqueeze.com, a “useful resource filled to the brim with web design articles on business and computers to web development tutorials on topics such as CSS, PHP, Javascript and much more.” Here’s how he tells the story of working his way into that position:

“I started writing for a (now gone) magazine called Creative Coding and ended up as the Assistant Editor there. In early 2008 it all fell apart and the Editor of the magazine and some very influential people (@lchad, @karinne and @JacobHaug) left to form The Web Squeeze. I stayed in touch but it wasn’t until a bit later on, desperate for cash (as all students are), I started doing the odd article for them. I focused mainly around jQuery but also branched into some HTML, CSS and PHP from time to time. It became clear that people liked reading my tutorials and that folks like The Web Squeeze were happy to publish them.  I started writing more and more until just a few weeks ago they started looking for someone to be the editor of their magazine/blog. So I went for it – kind of my dream job – getting to write my own articles but also help others do the same and get the same joy out of it as I did. A few days later, deep into the night I was told I managed to get the position. Since then it’s been great, I’ve been much more motivated to write articles and the magazine is growing in popularity with every passing day.”

Jack started using Twitter when he started doing more development work. He says “it was fantastic to get advice and help when I was just starting out with PHP and Javascript – although I’m sure I must have pissed a few people off!” I don’t know about those early days, but I know since I’ve been following him he has been interesting, entertaining, funny and helpful. He also writes really useful tutorials.

Jack, Mom and brother Sam

Jack currently has dreams of reaching 1,000 followers by Christmas. Would you consider checking out his profile and following him to give a nudge to his holiday? Also be sure to check out his self-designed typography-based site at http://www.jackfranklin.co.uk, where you can see his portfolio and latest projects, including get2meet.me, the first site to act as a social feed aggregator (yes, the very popular card.ly and myonepage.com came into existence a few weeks after this one). Finally, pay a visit if you haven’t already to TheWebSqueeze.com. I subscribe to their feed and find lots of useful web development information, tutorials and a helpful forum.

If you are interested in being interviewed as a part of this series, please let me know in the comments, or send me an email. If you have any questions or comments for jack, be sure to comment below. Finally, if you are not already, would you consider subscribing to this blog so you don’t miss any future updates? You can either subscribe to the RSS feed in the reader of your choice or you can receive the blog updates along with my Delicious bookmarks in your email inbox by filling out the simple little form at the top right of the page.

Thanks for taking the time to get to know Jack. I’m sure that if you start to follow him a little more closely from this point forward you will enjoy him as much as I have.