Kerry Kirk

A little bit about me

  • Screen shot of the main section of the digital sign
  • Screen shot of the security portal
  • Screen shot of the campus map section of the digital sign
  • Screen shot of the NKU Chase web site
  • Screen shot of the directory section of the digital sign

Like many, I started out learning web development on my own. I had been building computer systems for friends and setting up networks for clients when I decided I wanted to learn about web development. At the time I had been using an Access 97 database to house some data and decided I wanted it to be available via a dynamic website. Within a few days, I had a site up and running using ASP and the Access database. There was quite a learning curve at the time, but when I take on a project I eat, sleep and breathe it till it is the way I want it. I quickly found that the Access wasn't going to work for my needs so I dove into learning PHP and MySQL. I liked the open source combination and the community support. I've stayed with that combination for 99% of my web projects.

I started at NKU Chase College of Law in 2005. During my time at Chase I've created a CMS via PHP/MySQL to easily allow non-technical project leaders to manage their data on our website, designed and developed a Digital Signage project, an online student directory and am currently working on a US Supreme Court briefs project that involves parsing over 200,000 xml and tif files to make 200+ years of court documents available to our students. In addition to my web duties I am also responsible for helping staff learn to use the CMS, some server administration and monitoring of services.

In 2012 the NKU campus moved to Adobe's CQ. Chase followed late in that same year. This worked well for our static content. Not wanting to lose the ability to host dynamic content, we opted for a combination of CQ and the CMS I had created. For our dynamic content I adapted campus' CQ template to allow us to seamlessly incorporate our dynamic data into the content managed site.

In Dec. 2012 I finished a Masters in Computer Information Technology at NKU. In addition to web security, scripting, database and web programming I gained valuable experience in computer forensics and data recovery, computer security, malware analysis, server management and networking. The classes and projects helped to round out my education and have been invaluable at work. One of the things I love about this field is the ongoing learning that is required to stay current.