arnold csisztai - i develop.

about.

Hi! I am Arnold, born in Subotica, Serbia.
Currently living in Szeged, Hungary and working as a full-stack developer since 2002.

My interest in programming sparked early on when I got my hands on my first computer at the age of 7, a Commodore 64. Since my interest in gaming rapidly disappeared (and still didn't come back ;)), I dove into the manuals and started tinkering with small programs. That eventually snowballed into a passion for creating useful software.

Then I stumbled upon the demoscene, a vibrant community that showed me the artistic side of computing. Since I have always enjoyed creating art, I also commenced to produce pixel graphics in the early 90s, creating tons of them on various platforms like the C64, Game Boy, PalmOS, Amiga, and even DOS-based PCs. I've had some success in art competitions and even got featured in a book called The Masters Of Pixel Art (my demoscene pseudonym is Jailbird, hence the domain name).

Transitioning into web development, I kicked off my professional journey in the early 2000s with the now defunct SI&SI Company in Subotica. Back then, the internet was still in its infancy, and resources were scarce. But navigating those limitations actually taught me to be inventive and build solid foundations for web applications.

I left Subotica about 15 years ago and after five years of living in Budapest, I settled down in Szeged which I really love and call my home now.

In my spare time, I'm all about exploring new tech and working on side projects, and I still geek out over pixel art for retro computers. I also enjoy traveling, hiking, brewing beer at home (or just enjoying craft beers), catching a movie, cycling, and following our local football team in Szeged wherever they play. I also travel a lot with my girlfriend, check out our adventures at https://memories.jailbird.hu

career.

I kicked off my career back in 2002, working on freelance projects for all kinds of clients. Since then, I've had the chance to team up with people from all over the world, work on high-traffic commercial sites, and take on full-stack roles at both creative agencies and software companies.
Along the way, I've built custom engines that are still running strong, been part of some great teams, and helped deliver solid, scalable solutions that support business growth.

As a freelance developer, I have worked on a variety of projects, ranging from small websites to large-scale applications. My focus has always been on delivering high-quality code and ensuring client satisfaction.

I was responsible for developing and maintaining the company's intranet and various public facing web sites. My first role allowed me to gain valuable experience in working with a team and managing projects.

My first international employer. Cooperated in different periods of time. Worked on WordPress, Joomla, and custom PHP solutions.

Full stack programming, mainly WordPress based projects, but some custom PHP solutions as well.

I was part of a team which was responsible for the development of Profession, Hungary's leading job search website (Laravel).

Responsible for full-stack development and maintenance of web-based platforms of the company (mainly WordPress).

Responsible for backend and frontend tasks mainly in Drupal 9 based developer portals.

Magento backend (and a bit of frontend) development. Responsible for creating new modules, extending existing modules, and for bugfixes/tech support.

Working as a full-stack developer on an in-house, custom CMS for creating digital business reports: Reportl.

projects.

A selection of interesting personal, professional and freelance projects I've worked on, or contributed in a way or other over the years.

SzegediProgramok

This is my current main side project. I got fed up with how clunky and frustrating Facebook Events can be, so I decided to build my own fast, lightweight, no-nonsense local event aggregator.

It passed its MVP stage, now I am implementing adding new features when I have time for it.

Check it out: SzegediProgramok

Backend: Laravel, Filament, Node.js
Frontend: Vue.js, Tailwind CSS, Puppeteer
DB: PostgreSQL

MotoBike Webshop

MotoBike is the largest motorbike spare parts webshop in Serbia, and one of the biggest in the region. I was part of the team that built both their B2C and B2B platforms from the ground up.

I was responsible for: integrating Elasticsearch and developing the search itself, creating a messaging system, product comparison functionality, user profile functionalities, plus a lot of frontend work.

Check it out: MotoBike

Laravel based
Backend: PHP, Elasticsearch
Frontend: vanilla JavaScript
DB: MySQL

Untitled Phaser Game

Just a small POC game project to get familiar with Phaser 3. All programming and graphics was made by me.

Check out it's GitHub page
Check it out live: Untitled Phaser Game

Legend WW

Legend is a fashion design company based in Serbia

Its webshop is based on my custom CMS engine.

Check it out: Legend WW

CodeIgniter based
Backend: PHP
Frontend: vanilla JavaScript and jQuery
DB: MySQL

Officeshoes Webshop

The webshop of a quite popular footwear retailer in Central Europe, built on AcidCMS, my own custom CMS/E-Commerce engine.

Before this project, OfficeShoes didn't have a webshop, but they quickly realized its potentials. Now the engine serves multiple high-traffic shops all around Europe (Hungary, Slovakia, Romania, Czech Republic, Poland, Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia, Slovenia, Montenegro and Kosovo).

I have single-handedly developed the entire webshop and maintained it for several years until I moved on, and handed it over to a new team of developers.

Check it out: OfficeShoes

CodeIgniter based
Backend: PHP
Frontend: vanilla JavaScript and jQuery
DB: MySQL

Pixelite

An opensource pixel editor for making high-res images for the Commodore 64 and Commodore Plus/4, with a 320x200 resolution limit and support for 2 colors per 8x8 character block.

An older project I started because I needed a cross-platform pixel editor for creating C64 images. I put it together in a couple of days using jQuery. Check out it's GitHub page.

Check it out live: Pixelite

Frontend: vanilla JavaScript and jQuery

Shoebox Corporate Website

Shoebox is a Central-European distributor of brands like Converse, Dr. Martens, Levis, Puma, Timberland, Vans, Skechers, and many more. This is their corporate site.

The site was written from the ground up in vanilla JavaScript, (S)CSS, and HTML. I was responsible of general frontend work.

Check it out: Shoebox

Frontend: vanilla JavaScript, (S)CSS, HTML

A web based PDF reader

In 2011, I've had to write a web based PDF reader for a company which was using very slow computers with Internet Explorer 6 in their huge chain of stores, so I've had to optimize the app as much as possible.
I have copied the functionality from Sumatra, a desktop software, and in the end managed to include a bunch of features in my version, like a PDF2web converter, asynchronous page loading, keyboard shortcuts (page up/down, zoom in/out), 3 view modes (book mode, single page, fullscreen), search, bookmarking, or zoom. Note, this was back in 2011, when online PDF viewers were really rare, and almost none of them worked on IE 6, so it was a really big deal for me at the time.

Unfortunately, I don't have the code any more, just a video of the app in action, but I still think it's worth mentioning it here, because it was a really fun and challenging project, and I learned a lot from it.

Check out the video: My web-based PDF reader

Backend: vanilla PHP
Frontend: vanilla JavaScript and jQuery
DB: MySQL

Pubtrail

Just a small fun project which tries to locate all the pubs near your position in a predefined radius. It was quite useful on our pub-dive in Prague :)
The data is aquired from the OSM API.

Check it out live: Pubtrail

Frontend: React

Edge of Disgrace

Edge of Disgrace won the X'2008 demo-competition, it's considered one of the best Commodore 64 demos ever made, a milestone for the C64 demoscene, and I was lucky enough to be part of the team that created it. I was responsible for the graphics/design of the product.

Check it out what did people said about it on Pouet

Superverse Industries

In the beginning of 2000s, for a few years I worked as a graphics artists for a game development studio, at the time called Industry Entertainment. We were mainly making games for PDAs and smartphones (PalmOS, SymbianOS, Windows Mobile).

Check out our games (a few are freely downloadable): superverse industries

Meta Gallery

An opensource, minimalistic and blazing fast gallery based on htmx, Tailwind CSS, PHP 8, filesystem and IPTC Photo Metadata. Doesn't require a database.

Over the past few years, I've built up a pretty big photo collection, and I really needed a fast, easily searchable online gallery, something simple and straightforward, without all the extra fluff. Since I couldn't find anything that fit the bill, I decided to build my own, tailored exactly to what I needed.
Check out it's GitHub page.

Check it out live: Memories

Backend: vanilla PHP with PhpRouter
Frontend: Twig, Talwind CSS and htmx

DeepL Translator

A smaller, opensource Go CLI/GUI application that translates texts via the DeepL API

I originally built this app to translate subtitles from English to Hungarian, but these days I use it almost daily for all kinds of translation tasks, DeepL just does a much better job than Google Translate.

Check out it's GitHub page.

Backend: Golang
Frontend/GUI: Fyne

Reportl

Reportl is a digital reporting software.

For over a year, I was a part of a team that was developing a custom reporting platform, involved in both backend and frontend tasks.

Check it out: Reportl

Backend: vanilla PHP, custom engine
Frontend: vanilla JavaScript/TypeScript
DB: MySQL

Zero Gravity Developer portals

A developer portal (often shortened to devportal) is the interface between a set of APIs, SDKs, or other interactive digital tools and their various stakeholders. Zero Gravity is used by promintent companies like BNP Paribas, Vodafone, Shell, Publiq, Verifone, Ansys, Kbc, Schaeffler, or YBS...

For about three years, I was constantly working on both backend and fronted tasks in a team that was responsible for the development of the Drupal 9 based platform.

Check it out: Zero Gravity Developer portals

Drupal based
Backend: PHP
Frontend: vanilla JavaScript/TypeScript/React
DB: PostgreSQL

Profession

Profession is the leading job search website in Hungary, with over 1 million unique visitors per month.

For about a year, I was a part of a team that was responsible for the development of the platform, mainly working on the backend side. My responsibilites were mainly fixing bugs in this huge, legacy project.

Check it out: Profession

Laravel based
Backend: PHP
DB: MySQL

CAS Software Company Website

CAS Software is a German based company with a Hungarian branch, with a very versatile software portfolio, including CRM, ERP, and other business software.

Beside a lot of inside tasks, I was responsible for the development of the new company website, which was built on WordPress.

Check it out: CAS Software

WordPress based
Backend: PHP
Frontend: vanilla JavaScript
DB: MySQL

AcidCMS

A custom multilingual, multi-site CMS and e-commerce engine I built back in 2006 using PHP and MySQL, and it's still in use today! I designed it to be lightweight, user-friendly, and SEO-focused from the start.

I haven't worked on it in a long time, but other developers picked it up, and a few clients are still actively using it.

Webshops that are still using the engine:

Officeshoes (.hu, .ro, .cz, .sk, .hr, .pl, .ba, .rs, .me) - leading footwear distributor in Central Europe
Pokloni.com - one of the biggest gadgets shop in Serbia
Legend (.rs, .me, .ba) - fashion store

CodeIgniter based
Backend: PHP
Frontend: vanilla JavaScript and jQuery
DB: MySQL

hobbies.

I'm lucky to call programming a true passion beside being my job, but I also have some other hobbies that I really enjoy. These are the things I do in my free time, and they help me relax and recharge.

Homebrewing

I've been brewing beer at home for about 15 years, though I took a long break at one point. I got back into it recently with my girlfriend, since she was super curious about how it all works. Now we have a great time coming up with new recipes together and learning more about the whole brewing process. We even like to compete with our beers every now and then. Lately, we've been really into sour beers, so that's what we're focusing on.

Here are all the beers we have made together in the last 1.5 years:

Our tomato gose, Mary's Salty Revenge, 4% ABV

Our Double Strawberry Smoothie Sour, 8% ABV

Road Cycling

I've always loved biking, but around two years ago I got more into it and picked up a road bike. Now, whenever I have the time, I usually go for rides around 50 to 70 kilometers. After a while, my girlfriend got into it too, so we often go cycling together. It's a super relaxing and calming activity for us, as those long rides feel like a reset after a tough day.

Pixel Graphics

I've been making pixel art on the Commodore 64 ever since I got into the demoscene back in '92. I've always had a knack for art, and working within the strict limits of the C64's graphics (just 16 colors, 320x200 resolution, and only 2 colors per 8x8 block) felt like the perfect challenge for me. I've kept at it ever since, and honestly, I still love doing pixel art today.
I also got featured in a book called The Masters Of Pixel Art
You could find a lot of my pixel graphics on my c64gfx profile page.

Also, a hungarian newspaper called Magyar Szó made an interview with me about my hobby in 2008.

Traditional Graphics Art

Every now and then, I really enjoy getting back to traditional graphic art, purely for my own enjoyment. It's something I don't get to do often since free time is pretty limited, but whenever I have a moment and feel inspired, I love to pull out my art supplies and just start drawing or painting. It's a nice way to relax and unwind, even if it's just for a little while.

ArnoldCsisztai.

i develop.