My name is Chris Vannoy and I design and develop features and web applications as part of my role as the Digital Development Manager of the Innovation & Development department of The Indianapolis Star, a Gannett newspaper located in Indianapolis, Ind. As part of my role, I manage a team of three Rails developers.
I am a 1996 graduate of Roane County High School in Spencer, W.Va., and a 2003 graduate of West Virginia University in Morgantown, W.Va.
I have been developing and designing for the web on an amateur basis since my senior year in high school and moved into the professional ranks in 2006.
I work daily in JavaScript, Ruby on Rails and PHP and have at least a working knowledge of Perl and Django.
I also blog (infrequently) at dummied.org.
“Want to build a custom (photo gallery) solution? ... Hire Chris Vannoy.”Will Sullivan, Journerdism.com
Before I moved to the online department of The Journal News, the paper's blogs were managed using Blogger, resulting in less features, less reliability, less control and a difficult management environment. I spearheaded a move to a self-hosted solution and then built, designed and currently manage a Wordpress MU installation to manage our blogs. Because we deal with a managed environment, I designed custom template code to standardize the features of most blogs while allowing for override behavior on a blog-by-blog basis. Once we move our legacy bloggers over to the new system, the front of LoHudBlogs.com will take advantage of the flexible features that a self-hosted solution provides.
I designed, managed and was the lead developer on our newspaper's online coverage of the 2006 U.S. Open at Winged Foot Golf Club in Mamaroneck, N.Y. The site uses cutting-edge XHTML markup, CSS and JavaScript. I also coded, designed and helped develop our dynamic photo galleries that operated in conjunction with our Open coverage. I am in the process of expanding the gallery system to handle all photos taken by Journal News staff as well as submitted photos from the public.