{"id":1250,"date":"2019-11-15T12:59:10","date_gmt":"2019-11-15T04:59:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.intelliwolf.com\/?page_id=1250"},"modified":"2023-12-02T00:33:27","modified_gmt":"2023-12-01T16:33:27","slug":"about-mike-haydon","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.intelliwolf.com\/about-mike-haydon\/","title":{"rendered":"About Mike Haydon"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Mike Haydon is an internet entrepreneur and founder of Intelliwolf. He has built sites on WordPress since 2006.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My Work Story<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

I've always been \"into\" coding, starting when I was 8 years old. I was trawling through DOS on our family's first computer and came across a program called GW-BASIC, a version of the BASIC language Bill Gates used to create the first edition of Windows.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By trial and error, and later with a few books from the library, I taught myself to code in GW-BASIC<\/a>. I later progressed to QBasic<\/a> and spent many happy hours solving problems and getting stuck in infinite loops.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2001, doing Summer classes for my Bachelor of Arts at Notre Dame<\/a>, I took an introductory course on HTML. I built my first website on GeoCities<\/a>, got the highest ever grade for that course at the University (98%) and was hooked on building for the web.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where others were using Dreamweaver<\/a> and FrontPage<\/a>, I always preferred to build my websites just using Notepad++<\/a>. It never made sense to me why those other programs had to insert so much bloated code, which slowed everything down. To this day, I love clean, functional code and implement it whenever I can.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While completing the Bachelor of Arts (History)<\/a> and then Bachelor of Laws<\/a>, I built websites on the side. I made a few hundred dollars a month from affiliate marketing, following what I learned from Darren Rowse<\/a>, Armand Morin<\/a> & John Reese and later in Stompernet from legends such as Andy Jenkins, Andrea Warner (RIP both of them), Jerry West<\/a>, Dan Thies, Leslie Rohde<\/a>, and Don Crowther.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2006, I built my first WordPress website<\/a>. I had to learn PHP<\/a> to build the theme. Pre-created themes weren't really a thing back then. You pretty much only had Kubrick<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I started blogging about what I was learning regarding WordPress, social media (we called it \"web 2.0\" back then) and search engine optimization (\"SEO\").<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2006-2008 were spent learning and experimenting with web technologies. They were somewhat on the backburner as I got married and focused on my career as a lawyer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In late 2008, circumstances aligned and I decided to make the (super scary) jump from being a lawyer into being a full time web guy. This was one of the hardest decisions I've ever had to make, and there are still days when I'm not sure I made the right call. Those days usually involve missing semicolons and unhelpful error messages :)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It might not be immediately obvious, but practising law and coding are actually quite similar. They're both very detail oriented and process driven. They also have quite a bit of creativity within those constraints. I feel that the skills I built as a lawyer have enhanced my skills as a coder, and vice versa. The law degree obviously helped with my ability to communicate clearly. Hopefully that helps your experience on this website.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I've gotten to know some great people through my involvement with OMG Machines<\/a>, Network Empire and Income School<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I've taught web development and web design at OMG Machines as a guest teacher. I built a web design course with my friend Clinton Dixon that has been well received. I taught at the exclusive Network Empire Certification course and was their plugin developer for several years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I've built websites from little 5 page, local business sites all the way up to 50,000-page wholesaler and membership sites.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I'm often brought onto projects to solve a particular issue that needs a bit of custom code or a creative solution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I'm largely a self-taught programmer. While I have not studied computer science at university, I've taken a lot of online courses and read a lot of books to fill in the gaps, such as CS50<\/a> and Refactoring by Martin Fowler<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Languages I'm proficient in:<\/p>\n\n\n\n