Hi there, I'm Ben Sampson, the face behind Sampo Limited. I'm a web designer and developer from Witney, Oxfordshire, UK.

I have a passion for building websites in the right way. I write high-quality, maintainable, standards compliant code with a strong focus on performance. I also take great care ensuring everything I build is usable and accessible. Please take a look at some of my work below.

Some nice people have left me some feedback, see my testimonials.

I deliver a professional, friendly service for individuals and companies of all sizes in a pragmatic and speedy manner. See what services I offer below and get in touch!

Services

I'm currently available for work in the Oxford and Witney area and remotely.

  • Website design
  • Website development
  • Perfomance enhancements - make your site faster and cheaper to run!
  • Fixing and debugging existing websites
  • Development of plugins and themes

Skills

I have 10+ years’ experience in the industry and over that time have worked with the following technologies:

Front-end web development

  • HTML
  • CSS
  • Javascript (including jQuery)
  • Vue.js

Back-end web development

  • PHP
  • Wordpress (plugins and themes)
  • Laravel
  • C# / .NET

Get in touch!

The best way to get in touch with me is via email.

If you'd like to discuss you project with me or to get a quote I'm very happy to talk to you.

Email me on ben@sampo.co.uk

Testimonials

It's been a pleasure working with Ben on some of our client projects.

The implementation of our designs has been spot on every time. As a UX design agency, we have high expectations of implementation, and he not only met those expectations but also contributed with useful suggestions and adding nice touches of interactivity in the UI. He has great attention to detail and communication skills, is reliable and works efficiently. We highly recommend him!

Ben really understood what we were trying to achieve with our website and gave a clear timescale that he kept to. He stuck to our specifications, was efficient, communicative and helpful. He has both a great attention for detail and the ability to keep the overall look and feel of the site consistent and on brand.

The outcome is a very user-friendly site that looks professional and welcoming; we are incredibly pleased with it! I would absolutely recommend him to anyone.

I cannot recommend Ben highly enough. Having come to him off the back of a failed and ultimately costly and unpleasant experience with another developer, Ben was the difference of night and day. His approach is open, intelligent, calm, patient and straightforward. He has been a pleasure to work with throughout while delivering a flawless product not one hour over the original quote - impressive! I count myself as extremely fortunate to have come across Ben and I thoroughly look forward to continuing to work with him in the future.

Ben has has been amazing to work with. He was able to build the Exeter portal site within a very short timeframe to a fixed budget which he kept to. The build matched exactly to our design - but more than that - he was able to guide and help us on all technical difficulties that ensued. We were given lots of last minute changes and amends which Ben dealt with calmly and efficiently. We will definitely use Ben again when we can. I cannot recommend him more highly.

I've known and worked with Ben for many years, and have always been impressed with his passion for things to be done the right way and his eye for detail.

Ben is quick to understand any requirements I give him and always comes up with a neat solution. The results are always spot on.

It’s been a real pleasure working with Ben. He quickly digested the complexities of the project, and brought some valuable insight on how we could develop the final project. I look forward to working with him in the next round of development as well as for future projects.

Ben is a diligent and efficient worker. He was extremely helpful throughout the project, offering new ideas and solutions at every turn.

I would highly recommend working with him in the future.

We asked Ben to provide web design support for a client's web development project because of his expertise with Wordpress. We knew Ben to be a very personable, diligent and hardworking chap, but his output surpassed even our high expectations! Ben was fast, reactive, and above all, a very skilled web developer. I look forward to working with him again on many more client projects.

Oxford University Press
Passle
Adesta
Compound Eye
Navarino

Portfolio

Anvil

anvildeploy.app

Visit website →

Deployment dashboard for Laravel Forge.

I manage a bunch of different applications both for myself and for clients. Anvil gives me a nice overview of all of the deployments I've made to each of the apps at a glance.

This is a site that I created to scratch my own itch, but have opened up for free for other laravel developers to use.

Read the blog post

StonesThrow

stonesthrow.work

Emma and Jon are starting a new venture launching a coworking space in the Uckfield area.

They asked me to build a website based on a few wireframes that they put together. They already had a logo and a colour scheme, but asked me to come up with a design for the website to match their brand.

The resulting site is built using Laravel and makes use of some new CSS technologies such as CSS Grid layout. It also has Mailchimp integrations.

Visit website →

HouseHistree

househistree.com

Mark has been developing the idea of HouseHistree for a long time and asked me to help realise it.

Users are able to sign up to submit historic houses to the site. They are able to link their relatives to historic houses and build their family tree.

Because of the complexity of the site, we worked together to come up with a set of requirements.

Mark already had the logo and chosen the fonts, but gave me free reign on the design.

HouseHistree is built in Laravel. It was a perfect candidate to try out the new Admin panel for Laravel - Laravel Nova. It contains integrations with both Mailgun and MailChimp. The powerful search is built using Algolia.

Visit website →

Exeter Live Better

exeterlivebetter.com

I was asked by Franks + Franks to take their design and turn it into a working, Wordpress powered, website for Exeter council.

Visit website →

Oxford University Press - English Language Teaching

elt.oup.com

While working for Oxford University Press I was tasked with making their existing desktop website work on all device sizes - making it responsive.

We decided that the best course of action was to re-write the front-end of the website.

During this process I created a front-end framework comprised of base styles and modules (simiar to how Bootstrap and Foundation work) which we then used to build the new responsive site.

We also addressed many usability and accessability issues by conducting constant user testing and collecting feedback.

The result is a much more consistant design with a streamlined code base which is not only good for continued development, but also helps with the overall performance of the website.

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Email Subject Line Keyword Checker

Use this checker to find out which keywords will boost or drop your email success rates.

Action Science Theatre

actionsciencetheatre.com

A podcast in the style of a radio play, that mixes action, science, comedy and silly voices to create a welcome distraction from real life for 20 minutes or so.

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Sampson Machine Engineering

sampsonmachineengineering.co.uk

Local machine engineering company offering machinery repairs, custom classic car parts, vehicle repairs and machined parts.

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Is it Pancake Day today?

isitpancakeday.sampo.co.uk

If you love Pancake Day (like me), then check this every day and you'll never miss out!

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ISBN Converter

isbnconverter.sampo.co.uk

Convert ISBN's from 10 digit to their 13 digit counterparts and vice versa.

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Name the note

namethenote.sampo.co.uk

A drill for beginner musicians to aid reading sheet music.

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Open source projects

Laravel Enum

BenSampo/laravel-enum

Simple, extensible and powerful enumeration implementation for Laravel.

View on GitHub →

Laravel Count Totals

BenSampo/laravel-count-totals

A laravel package which simplifies calculating totals using conditional aggregates.

View on GitHub →

Laravel Embed

BenSampo/laravel-embed

Effortless responsive embeds for videos, slideshows and more.

View on GitHub →