Category Archives: 2017 Summer class

PHP and the Temple of GitHub Doom

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Okay, so I’m really frustrated at the moment. I’ve been trying to upload my PHP stuff for the last couple of hours and it’s not working. I think it’s all rooted in the fact that my desktop GitHub app is somehow messed up. (I spoke to a classmate, who looked at mine, and said it looks different from hers–so, I’ll be emailing you about that as soon as I post this.) I have, however, written some PHP and that’s fairly simple. The only thing that’s kind of confusing to me is the “why” behind PHP, but I’ve been reading about it and found some things that make some sense. Especially, of course, the natural aspect of it being server-side as opposed to client side.

I’m really interested to delve deeper into my project. I read through the WordPress articles, and and while I appreciate each of those elements, I don’t think those are necessarily what I’ll be using or focusing on. There won’t be posts or a sidebar. It will be much more like a quiz you can’t comment on–a la Pottermore or North.

This week, I have an interview with someone who works at Silver Hand Meadery in Williamsburg. (Actually, I think it’d be great if I could get them to promote the project once it’s complete.) One of the biggest aspects of my project isn’t even coding related–I’m going to be implementing the photographic and design elements. So. My biggest challenge is going to be to balance that out. I want to get that out of the way as soon as possible so that I can focus on the code and making the whole thing seamless.

I’m looking forward to working in this new medium–hopefully master the process with this project and then apply the same method and process to future projects and stories!

PHP, MAMP- Better, But Still Not 100%

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Just as I feel like I finally understand something, it seems to all break down. Last week I felt like I was completely understanding PHP, and to be honest, I feel like I still do. Unfortunately, I am having trouble with it hooking up with my MAMP server. However, if that is my only struggle, and I am not almost in tears like I was with JavaScript, then that’s alright with me. It might have been because I wasn’t in class when we went over this, or that I am reading the instructions wrong, but I for some reason cannot find where it says “phpmyadmin” to create a new database. I am continuing to work on it, but am getting a little frustrated. But, like I said, I think I am fully understanding PHP and have been able to create a folder under htdocs, so hopefully I will eventually get it running sometime in the near future.

As far as this week goes, I am really enjoying PHP and have taken some of the additional courses on Codecademy in my spare time. I don’t understand it as well as HTML, or CSS, but it’s coming along.

For the readings, I found them very helpful this week. I am still a little bit confused about the child and parent themes in WordPress, but am hoping this is something that we will attend to in class next week.

Overall, I am pleased to be feeling this way. During the time when we were working JavaScript and the slideshow, I thought I might have to drop the class because I couldn’t understand. Now, I am feeling a little bit more confident in my skills and knowledge of the material. I am really looking forward to the final project and creating my own personal portfolio.

Final Pitch- Personal Portfolio

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About: When sitting down and thinking about which project I should do (choosing between a sports blog and personal portfolio) I decided that the best use of my time would be to create a personal portfolio website. I know this may not be the most exciting creation, but I do think that it will be useful to have in the future in order to put a twist on a regular resume. I would like to include my resume along with display my work done throughout the Georgetown PRCC program, my college communications work, along with my work from Sage Communications. Along with these displays, I would also like to showcase my coding skills in a way that  other potential future employers will see.

Audience: I am looking to put this website on all of my social media accounts along with my resume, so my audience will be my coworkers, friends, family, and future employers.

Goals: My goals are to focus on HTML and CSS in a way to create an interactive, well designed site. I would also love to be able to add this to my resume, as stated above, as a way to further engage and impress potential employers.

How will I achieve these goals/Planned Modifications: 

  • I will add links to my social media accounts that are available for employers to scan.
  • I will add a contact form plug-in
  • I will change the color scheme, as well as add designs
  • I want the buttons on the sides to get dark and the others to become light when I hover over them.

Theme: Portfolio lite

URL: AllieFoard.com

UPDATED: How will I achieve these goals/Planned modifications:

  • I will create a contact form
  • I will change the color scheme
  • I will add designs: boxes around various site content
  • I will add links to my social media accounts
  • I will add a PDF viewer plug-in
  • I will add social media links in the footer

Theme: Anissa

URL: AllieFoard.com

Word Press and PHP Drama

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This week I spent most of my time re-reading through the WordPress readings and thinking about what I should be doing for my final project. Because I hope to be able to build on what I create for the final project, I want to make sure that this is something I can keep up with and that the theme I choose has enough flexibility to fit different types of content (i.e. recipes, reviews, about me, etc.). What I was able to come up with you can find in my updated Final Pitch post, but to give you a synopsis, I want to create a website that is focused on food, but also gives my audience/readers a glimpse into my life and who I am. I want to feature things about myself, what I’m interested in and what I’m doing in hopes to be able to connect with others like me.

What I took away from the readings was the complexity of WordPress. It is not as straightforward or easy as it seems. There are levels of complexity that are giving me a little anxiety knowing we have to navigate WordPress to create the site. On the other hand, as stated in my last post, being able to use a platform like WordPress also gives us a safety net to rely on, which I really appreciate.

For my PHP code assignment, I added a comment box where site visitors could input their name, email address, and comment. I explain in my code, that the comments will all be replied to individually and thus the email address is needed. I want to be able to incorporate this into my final project as a customization. I also want to be able to incorporate liking the content because I think user engagement is most important. That being said, the PHP code assignment was not as easy as I thought it would be. While this might be my favorite code-type we’ve learned thus far, in practice, PHP can be difficult. At first, I was having trouble echoing the different boxes I had created. I Googled my way through it, but I’m hoping to be able to learn it on my own in the future.

Questions:

  • For the next class, will be going through how to create the repository for our final project in GitHub?
  • Will you walk us through how to install WordPress on our hosting service (like GoDaddy)?

The WebMD of Web Development

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This exercise was not as terrible as I thought it would be. For the first time in seven weeks I can say thank you to Codecademy for leaving me with a boat as I did the homework. As always there was a necessary assist from W3Schools, the paddle, but I was not completely in the dark this week.

That being said, I have to thank W3Schools for explaining how to connect my PHP file to the HTML page. I looked back at my notes, and reflected on our class, and realized that the explanation from Greg was the only one we had to go on.

Now there was some confusion, which showed up when I sent my repository. Every now and then Googling the answers feels like looking to WebMD for a health diagnosis and falling down a rabbit hole. Since Codecademy gave no instructions, I looked to W3Schools. They helped me get some of the code but showed several different ways of connecting and referencing the PHP and getting it to do things. Naturally, I chose one that did not do what I thought it did. This explanation, among the four others available, seemed to make the most sense though. Well now it’s been fixed and the code does what it should.

I am definitely happy to be moving on to editing code instead of writing it from scratch. I am narrowing down the themes and am ready to adjust the child theme to be what I need it to be. I’m also excited to see my dad’s reaction, hopefully a happy one, when the site is done. I am not excited for the many more bottomless pits that Google and W3Schools will be dropping me in. Yes, trial and error are all part of it, but doctors tell patients to avoid WebMD, we seem to be doing the opposite.

Oh well. C’est la vie.

Plans for Domination Etc

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URL:  www.mollyhunterkorroch.com (Although there will probably be some sort of /historyofhoney sort thing added.)

Description:  A visual story on the process of making mead.

Goals:

  • To learn how to tell a story in this way. I’m very interested in pursuing other visually stimulating story topics that can be told in this manner.
  • Explain how mead is made in the most aesthetically pleasing manner possible
  • Easy to use and understand

Audience: People who are curious, foodies, anyone who enjoys aesthetically pleasing things

Process:

  • Make and edit still photos and “Cinemagraphs”
  • Research and write story
  • Create “slideshow” using jQuery– a prettier one than the test project. I realize the issues will be creating a slideshow of automatically playing mp4 files. I’ve found ways to do this via jQuery plugins.
  • Use CSS and HTML to upload and style the text overlaying the slideshow

Functions:

  • The slideshow–I’m hoping for a vertical slideshow, but we’ll see what I can finagle
  • Start and stop video motion. (Although hopefully it’ll run on a loop and you can’t tell when it begins and ends. Again, this may be a high hope.)
  • Fade in of text
  • Possible sound behind the still pictures (but, I’m going to film all this later this week and it depends if I found cool clean sounds.)
  • Also hoping to implement some responsive design elements–again it will depend on the video situation

Theme:

  • I will probably end up using the WordPress Twentyseventeen theme, because it’s the most simple.
  • I won’t have the infinite scroll
  • Most likely, I will be dismantling many of the aspects and just keeping it like a simple webpage–a file under my main website that can be visited and cross-posted onto social media, etc.

Questions from Week 7 Readings

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I thought out readings this week were very helpful, especially because I actually understood some of the concepts on first glance without having to Google search every other word in the document. A few terms that I did struggle with a bit were as follows:

  1. WP_DEBUG – When I first read through the instructions, I understood how to turn this on and off the debugging feature from the instructions provided, but did not understand what that would show on the site? Does this show you errors in your code on Sublime or in WordPress? I know we’ve spoken about debugging and checking errors in your code before, but I’m still a bit confused about how you open the code, check the code, understand the error messages, etc. I really appreciate the second portion of the document that explained how to display the error message in a clear, director manner. Although I still struggle a bit to understand what the bug lingo means (e.g. “call_user_func_array() expects parameter 1 to be valid” is not a clear description of the problem to me, whereas something like “the code is missing a bracket” would be very helpful).
  2. The section on WordPress templates was a bit confusing to me. Based on our discussion last week, I thought we should only be adding content to the “wp-content” folder and then if we having something that is functional (e.g. PHP or jQuery) it should go in the plugins folder but then something that is more design based should go into themes. According to the reading, however, the header, footer, sidebar, etc. themes that you may want to add should end in .php – so wouldn’t that mean they belong in the plug-in folder? If it’s a template, it’s a design feature, but when why is it built with a function code?
  3. Was the “Custom Fields” reading basically describing when you scroll over an “email” form on a website and it drops down the 3 or 4 emails you have used on that account? And in that scenario, the “key” would be the email field and then the value, or values, is the 3 or 4 email addresses the computer has saved from previous entries? The example made sense, but I was struggling to understand when you would use it in a practical sense as you are likely not going to put “Currently Reading” and “Today’s Mood” into custom fields on a regular basis.
  4. Lastly, if we have time I would like to go over how to “enqueue the parent and child theme stylesheets.” I read through the description several times, and if it’s simply copying the code, as with adding a link to a style.css sheet in HTML, then I can copy the code, but I was unclear if there are certain labels/titles/lines that need to match the code I write.

Final Pitch – Profile/Portfolio

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Goals: For my final project, I have decided that I’d really like to add on to my current website and make it a portfolio/profile page about myself for potential future employers. I want to make this kind of website page because I believe that as a Public Relations professional, it is crucial to have some sort of landing page that speaks to your skills – not only from a communications perspective, but from a coding/web design perspective (especially when I can say that I have designed the page myself!). The audience of this page will be current and future coworkers, my networks, visitors to my LinkedIn page, and future employers who will view my page through an application submission. I hope that this will make me look like a robust and mature professional in my career, to be able to provide a landing page for easy-to-access content to my resume, portfolio, and more.

Audience: The audience of this page will be current and future coworkers, my networks, visitors to my LinkedIn page, and future employers who will view my page through an application submission. I hope that this will make me look like a robust and mature professional in my career, to be able to provide a landing page for easy-to-access content to my resume, portfolio, and more.

How I’ll Achieve My Goals:

Theme: Lighthouse

Track: I will be doing mostly front-end modifications, with some back end tweaking.

Planned Modifications:

  • A contact form in the footer of each page that will send an email to me alerting me of the submission.
  • Display an embedded document (my resume) on my website.
  • Add images of me and my previous work.
  • I will add link to my social media accounts as a way for website visitors to find me.
  • Add a Google font to make the text more unique and interesting.
  • Hover over menu options at the top of the screen in a particular color.
  • Add a Google map displaying my international work and travel.
  • Additional theme, color, and design element changes, including modifications to the navigation bar.

URL: lucynegash.com

Final Project Pitch Post: A Running Blog — and Digital Accountability Partner

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For my final project, I’d like to create a personal site about one of my hobbies — running. I started running two years ago, and my goal is to run a full marathon (26.2 miles) in 2018.

I am pursuing this topic for my final project because I feel as though I need something to hold me accountable to actually go running consistently. I am envisioning this site as a place where I can track all of my training runs, my favorite routes, photos, and details about my past and upcoming races.

Some of the customizations and features that I’d like to build into my site include a page where I can discuss my training, a custom post type to track the different details of my runs, and a widget or plugin that connects to my Strava profile and shows my recent running routes.

Goals: 

  • The goal of my final project site will be to serve as a means to hold me accountable to run consistently as I begin my marathon training journey. The earliest I would run a marathon would be March 2018, and I don’t need to actually start training to run 26.2 miles until about four months before the race, but I’d like to build up my baseline fitness, strength, and speed in the meantime.
  • A second goal is to gain a readership made up of both new and experienced runners and anyone who enjoys or is interested in the sport of running, and to foster conversation among this community.
  • My third and final goal is to use this site to demonstrate my basic understanding of web development principles and the WordPress platform.

Audience: 

My site’s audience will include my friends and family who want to keep up with my progress, as well as like-minded running enthusiasts who are seeking information and motivation. I’d love to tailor my site around living and running in Washington, D.C., which might make my target audience more specific to runners who live in the D.C. metro area or other urban areas.

How I’ll Achieve My Goals: 

  • I plan to have different pages on my site, including a page called Run, which will feature recaps of my runs using the custom post type I will create — as well as an About Me page and a Contact page where readers can submit questions, comments, and ideas.
  • I will also link my Strava profile — where I currently track all of my runs — to my site, so that my readers can see my recent and past running routes.
  • I will customize my chosen WordPress theme with new colors and font types. 

Theme: Retina

Track:

I plan to make several modifications and customizations to my site that are client-side and server-side, so I will pursue the full-stack track. My planned modifications are listed below.

Planned Modifications: 

  • I plan to create a child theme so that I can make changes to the colors and fonts on my site.
  • I will create a custom post type called “Run” with a custom metabox called “Run Details.”
  • I will render four custom fields within the metabox, including neighborhood, distance, date, and time. The latter two fields will indicate the date and time that my run actually occurred on, and will be separate from the date and time stamps that are already included on each published post. This will allow me to closely track the details about each of my runs.
  • I will create categories called “Training Run” and “Race” to distinguish these types of posts from more general blog posts.
  • I will install a text widget on the main sidebar of my site using shortcode from my Strava profile to show my most recent running routes.
  • I will add a plugin for a contact form, as well as social media contact buttons.

URL: www.therunningglover.com

My site will be called The Running (G)lover, which is a play on both my last name and the topic of my site. People are constantly mispronouncing my last name — it rhymes with lover, not clover — and so in addition to my site being a digital accountability partner, I’m hoping it will help people to learn the correct pronunciation of my name (and of the Glover Park neighborhood where I also live — it’s pronounced like the word “glove” with an “r” on the end!).

Final Pitch – Recipe Blog

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For my final project I plan to build a recipe site with rotating pictures, cooking instructions, a Q&A section for recipe requests, a search function, and (potentially) a rating button.

This would be a niche interest page intended for anyone that enjoys cooking and is searching for new, fun recipes. I have always enjoyed cooking and, although I don’t claim to be an expert, I have a ton of good recipes that family and friends are always asking for. I think this site will be a fun project for me and something I would be proud to share and continue working on once our class is finished.