Hi, I’m Darren Beale or feel free to call me Bealers (it is what I call myself).

I’ve been working in the web industry since the late 90’s and have been self-employed for most of that time.

Professionally I used to be a back end PHP web programmer and Linux system administrator but these days I am focused on running my PHP development, support & maintenance company, Siftware.

I write this blog because I want to improve my writing, but I also figure I may as well pass on any useful & actionable information that I manage to glean whilst I travel upon my journey.

I live in Wales with my partner Sami and between us we have six lovely children. I love being outdoors, preferably running on a mountain or by the sea.

Est. 1998

Before WiFi, before blogging, before the iPhone and certainly before there was anything called social media, I have been building websites professionally. As a result, I have also maintained a personal site here at Bealers.com (Wayback Machine link).

bealers@desktop:~$ whois bealers.com
   Domain Name: BEALERS.COM
   Registry Domain ID: 2406668_DOMAIN_COM-VRSN
   Registrar WHOIS Server: whois.cloudflare.com
   Registrar URL: http://www.cloudflare.com
   Updated Date: 2022-09-30T09:53:42Z
   Creation Date: 1998-11-12T05:00:00Z
Code language: Bash (bash)

During that time over 500 items have been published to my blog – some of it not complete rubbish – and as my focus and interests have changed, so have the subjects that I’ve covered.

Externally published writing

• It’s time to tackle your legacy apps Boagworld
• Web application maintenance should be more of a thing Smashing Magazine
• What is Vagrant and why should I care? 24 Ways

Other people with my name who are definitely not me

Just in case you are here mistakenly, these links might help:

• Darren Beale (a.k.a.Decoder. D&B Producer, also Bristolian 🙌)
• Darren Beale (Founded Musclefood.com)

Contact

If you’d like to get in touch then email bealers@siftware.com or I am sometimes active on Instagram (@bealers) and much less so, Twitter (@bealers).

Additionally, I am on Linkedin and some of my Facebook feed is public.

You can also call me on 0845 680 9676 during UK office hours and leave a message.

Important note: If you’re attemtping to contact me to sell me something I’m afraid you are wasting your time. I make it a point to never respond to unsolicited sales emails or calls.