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Our newest recruit Brad on working remotely

Our latest recruit, Brad Ellis, on what it's like working on the CMS, Envelope, remotely.

From the Beginning

I joined Sonder Digital a month ago as their new developer. It’s been both an incredibly exciting and refreshing experience! Within this short space of time, I’ve learnt a great deal about the inner workings of Sonder, gotten to know the team, and seen how incredibly hard they all work.

When I applied for the chance to work closely with our Technical Director, Rob Swan, I could not possibly have imagined the level of collaboration that myself and Rob have begun to achieve. Having the ability to look at, and comment on, each other’s development contributions has allowed us to efficiently change our rapidly growing in-house content management system, Envelope.

Collaboration

As developers, we build the framework that all of the websites we create are made from. Doing this remotely has the potential to create some obstacles to collaboration.

With the advancement of development cooperation tools and much of the world turning to remote working, developing away from the office and the rest of the team has proven to be no obstruction to the level of work that can be produced.

The advantages of these advances are huge, including the ability for me to develop within my own environment, whilst still being able to work closely with Rob and the rest of the team. Developing in our own environments means essentially that Rob and I can work on the same bit of code when he's in Somerset and I'm in Derbyshire without it causing problems to the system.

Envelope

My initial workload has consisted of spending time getting to grips with Envelope.

Envelope is the system and software behind all of our websites - it allows us to edit and design your website, and also makes it easy for you to edit your website yourself. This content management system (CMS) is created and owned entirely by Sonder. Our client base and their needs are constantly expanding and evolving, so it made perfect sense for Sonder to bring extra hands in to help develop Envelope and its endless abilities.

Variety

Working at Sonder is an incredible experience, and I feel very lucky to have landed such an exciting development role.

There are many elements to our software including:

Website design
Blogs
Fully-fledged e-commerce abilities
Customer relationship management
Events

Those are the frequently used elements, but there are many more, making working on such a project complex, but very enjoyable and rewarding.

We are all very excited to see what improvements and changes are to come to Envelope, with some end goals includING re-adjusting some of the current inner workings, providing extra functionality and simplicity.

Other Relevant Resources

There's always more to learn, we recommend these blogs:

Why I Joined Sonder

How I Manage Working from Home

The Responsibility of Agency Work

What My Working Day Looks Like

Back to All Resources

Posted by Brad Ellis on February 15th 2021

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Sonder are absolute game-changers! Their website revamp services are nothing short of extraordinary. I was blown away by the exceptional level of creativity and skill they brought to the table. From the very first meeting, it was evident that they genuinely care about their clients and take the time to understand their unique needs.

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Sonder Digital have designed and continue to host our website. They have understood very well our needs and managed to balance what would otherwise have been a pretty complex user journey. It is streamlined, concise and on brand. Their customer service is fantastic, you will always find a team member on hand to assist. We have worked with Sonder Digital now for over a year and have had consistently good service. Would highly recommend!

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The whole team were fabulous in helping us to pull together our vision of a new website. Great comms, professional, forward thinking and quick to offer suggestions and find solutions. We have ended up with a great looking website and wouldn't hesitate in recommending them.

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I have had the pleasure of using Sonder Digital for quite a while now. The whole team seem to be able to cover every eventuality - from geekish technical stuff, design, social media and any problem that might arise. Whether contact is made by email or over the phone, their response is always speedy and they are great people to do business with. I guess the bottom line is that since using Sonder, my sales have rocketed. Definitely recommend.

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