About Me

Shropgeek Rebellion, May 2018. Thanks to Drew McLellan for the photo.

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

Other people with my name who are definitely not me

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

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.