what i do
Currently at Clicks Web Design
I build websites I’d want to use myself.
I’m Dario Bimbi, a web developer at Clicks Web Design who came up through game design. My focus is custom WordPress themes, plugins, and web apps, and after about ten years of doing this work I have a pretty clear idea of what makes a site good and what makes a site just look good.
about
Ten years on the web.
I started out in game design at DePaul University, and even though I ended up building for the web instead of for consoles, the habit stuck: I care how a site feels to use, the same way a game has to feel right in your hands. Day to day at Clicks I build custom WordPress themes, write functions and widgets, run PHPUnit and Jest, and review pull requests from the team. I also spend a fair amount of time talking with clients about what their site really needs to do.
Outside the WordPress work I have also shipped a couple of Flutter mobile apps for Clicks with a Firestore and Google Cloud backend. That client conversation part is honestly half the work, since most clients know what they want but need a little help turning it into something you can actually build.
quick facts
- Role: Web Developer II, Clicks Web Design Inc.
- Based in: St. Charles, Illinois
- Education: B.S. Computer Game Development, DePaul University
- Stack: WordPress, PHP, JavaScript, Angular, Flutter
- Data: MySQL, Firestore, Google Cloud
- Tools: Adobe XD, Photoshop, Premiere, PHPUnit, Jest, GitHub
- Logo model: George, our mini schnauzer
experience
Where I’ve shipped.
Dec 2017 to Present · 8+ years
Web Developer II at Clicks Web Design Inc.
Most of my work here is custom WordPress, both from-scratch themes and Divi-based ones, with the pages, functions, and widgets that go with them. Day to day that also means PHPUnit and Jest tests, ongoing maintenance on an in-house PHP CMS, reviewing the team’s work before it goes to the CEO for sign-off, and the client conversations that decide what actually gets built. Mockups happen in Adobe XD, asset work in Photoshop.
Jun 2016 to Nov 2017 · 1.5 years
Front End Web Developer at OVC Lawyer Marketing
Joomla and WordPress content work, on-page SEO and meta, and 100+ Google Business listings kept in line. Coordinated work across contractors and interns and built front-end widgets in PHP and JavaScript.
Earlier work (2014 to 2017): Website Designer at NicKey Performance, Marketing Director at GRAPA, and Lead Level Designer at Space Dwarves Entertainment.
playground
Things you can play with.
Small things I built for fun, usually to try out an idea or work through something I was curious about. They run right here in the browser, and each one is a single file you can read from top to bottom. Have a poke around.
-
Ant Buster
A tower-defense game about keeping ants off the picnic. Place your cannons, survive the waves, and try not to let them carry the food away. It is the biggest thing I have built just for the fun of it.
- Vanilla JS
- Canvas 2D
- Zero deps
-
Pokédex
Browse every Pokémon, then pick one and see every trading card it has ever appeared on, with live pricing. Two public APIs talking to each other with no framework in sight.
- PokéAPI
- pokemontcg.io
- Vanilla JS
-
Prompt Studio
A little studio for writing and scoring AI prompts. Pick a task, draft a prompt, and it grades how the result came out so you can see what is actually working.
- Vanilla JS
- Single file
- Zero deps
-
Card Browser
Browse Pokémon TCG cards and sealed product by set, in English or Japanese, with live prices coming through a server-side proxy that keeps the API key out of the page.
- JustTCG
- WP REST API
- Transient cache
selected work
Stuff I’m proud of.
Game · Unity
The Lost Probe
An adventure-puzzle game where the player is a robot who wakes up after a crash and has to wander a strange world looking for the rest of his body. I built the levels and designed the puzzles for each zone.
Game · Unity · Studio
Space Dwarves Entertainment
Lead Level Designer at Space Dwarves Entertainment, where I spent about a year and a half on two Unity games, Bionic Marine Command Online and Osiris. I owned the level layout work, scripted small Unity tools in C# and JavaScript, and led a team of nine other designers through milestones, art reviews, and the long final polish.
Web · WordPress
NicKey Performance
The website for a performance auto shop in Loves Park, Illinois. I built and maintained it across both WordPress and Joomla, and wrote the custom HTML pipeline they used to list vehicles for sale on eBay. Live at nickeyperformance.com.
skills
The toolbox.
Web
Apps & Frameworks
APIs & Data
Craft & Tools
get in touch
Tell me what you’re building.
Working on a WordPress site or a custom build and could use a second pair of hands? Send me a note below and I usually reply within a day.