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Our new Wibbler, Dervla

Dervla Cosgrove our web support agent
By Dervla Cosgrove 10 September, 20215 MIN READ
Our new Wibbler, Dervla - Wibble Web Design and Development

Hello, I’m Dervla! The newest member of the Wibble team. I have taken up post as a support agent/developer. I’m fairly new to the team but have already been made to feel so welcome. 

My background

I come from Cushendall, a small village along the Antrim coast, where hurling and camogie is the focus of everyone’s attention. I started playing camogie from a young age and went on to have many successes with both my club and county; I was also awarded 2 colleges all-stars. Training and matches still take up most of my spare time currently- but sure I wouldn’t have it any other way! I even dabbled in “the big ball” for a while, however Gaelic football just wasn’t my cup of tea…much to my mother’s disgust (for reference, she’s a Kerry woman).

Our support agent Dervla playing Camogie
Cushendall V Dunloy

I love to travel, a pastime that hasn’t been quite so active these last 2 years. But before everything came to a hault, I was able to explore the streets of New York City for 8 weeks in Summer 2019. Plenty of sightseeing and too many cans of four loko were consumed. I believe everyone should experience this city at least once in their life. The perfect place to people watch too lol. 

Our new Wibbler, Dervla - Wibble Web Design & Development
Top of the Rock

My time before Wibble

Before Wibble, I was a student at Belfast Metropolitan College, studying a Foundation degree in Software Engineering. I was introduced to a whole different side of IT that I hadn’t came across in secondary school education. I covered a variety of different modules, such as; Web Development, Programming, Databases and more. In my second year, I set out on my 15 week industry placement, designing a piece of software and developing a website for a real-estate company. This ignited my passion for web development. And from here it was on to UUJ, where I enrolled in a Computing Technologies degree. 

Becoming a Wibbler

Since joining Wibble at the beginning of August, I already feel the knowledge I have gained in just four weeks is invaluable. On my first day, I was introduced to the team and spent the day getting to know the applications I would be using everyday and just finding my general role within the team. After my first day, I was thrown straight into work. At first it was a steep learning curve, but I constantly asked questions and I have really progressed over these past four weeks.

Tickets and Support

My main role is support work. This entails dealing with clients on a daily basis and answering their requests. We use an application called Freshdesk, where a client can email our [email protected] with their request or problem. This creates a ticket where we are able to manage all requests and assign these tasks to ourselves or another member of the team. Wibble have a support SLA in place to respond promptly to all support tickets and I play a key role in ensuring that when someone needs help, Wibble are there to provide that help quickly and efficiently.

Our support agent's dashboard
Helpdesk

Wibble Support Package (WSP)

As well as working on Tickets, I have also been working on the Wibble Support Package. This was the one job that I tried my best to avoid doing for the first couple of weeks because I didn’t want to be the one to break a website, even though the likelihood of that happening was <0.01%.

WSP offers hosting on our server, automatic backups and off-server storage, security patches and updates. My job is to complete these updates, whether it be for the latest core version, plugins or themes. I then refer back to the client, letting them know these updates have taken place.

Development

Recently, I have been assigned my own site to Develop, readswell.co.uk (when I finish it, I’ll be editing this post and linking it so everyone can see it). Although the vast majority of the development work we carry out is custom WordPress development, we occasionally use themes that have been bought from sites like Themeforest to get a site up and running quickly for a client. We take full responsibility for the setup, install and configuration of the site, allowing the client to just populate it to their own requirements. The client picked out a theme that they felt best suited their site. In order to be able to develop the site, I had to spend a few hours learning the theme and figuring out how it worked so that I could begin developing. I worked closely with readswell along the way, keeping them informed of how their site was progressing, but also making sure what I was creating was up to their standards. The site is still in development, but as of yet, I am pleased with what I have accomplished in my first site development.

Our new Wibbler, Dervla - Wibble Web Design & Development
Work from home setup

Although I’m relatively new to the big bad working world, I have thoroughly enjoyed my experience so far. Everyone at Wibble has offered lots of advice and guidance to help me settle into my new role (sorry Tony for being a pain in your ear). I look forward to continuing on this journey with what has already proved to be a great company to work for. 


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Dervla Cosgrove our web support agent

Dervla Cosgrove

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