Category Archives: 2018 Fall class

End of the Cycle

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Well, here we are, at the apex of this class. I can say 100% that I had no idea what I was getting to when I signed up for this class. This course has truly been an experience, to say the least. I thought by the end of this class I would be able to go talk to all my computer engineer friends and brag about how I learned all they knew in four years in 4 months. Today, I stand here a humble man and can I say I have the utmost respect for those guys.

Coding is a beautiful art, and like with any art, it takes a bit of talent, but there are ways in coding to become great without the talent. Yet, I think some of my classmates had a knack for it. They found ways to work through problems they had an come out on the other end. I even found myself in similar precarious situations that I was able to get through with a few Google searches.

I am proud of the fact that I did build a website for myself. I came into the class believing that it was going to be easy for me to whip up a website whenever I needed one. Yet I came to find out in the middle of the semester that it possibly might not happen for me. I also know I was fairly inconsistent with my performance in the class. In the beginning I was doing very well with learning and then it came to applying and it became a bit harder, however still a bit fun.

Most importantly, thank you Professor Linch for being patient with us throughout the class, even though you were going through things that I’m sure are very elementary to you, you still made it interesting while being very helpful. So for that, thank you!

I Can’t Believe I Built A Website

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Woohoo! The final project is done! I am really proud of how mine turned out and I have been showing everyone what I’ve done. Professor Sturgis, who was especially enthusiastic about this course, was excited to see everything I had learned. Currently, my portfolio has been updated to meet the requirements for another class’ final.

Overall, I really enjoyed this class and learned a lot. I feel like I have expanded my thinking about computer systems and technology in general. I took to this course to learn more about the basics of “coding” and I feel I have accomplished that goal! It has been a lot of fun testing out code. It’s an incredible feeling when something I wrote actually works.

During the syllabus week at the very beginning of this class, I was scared. I actually considered dropping this course because it seemed like too much work. Now we are at week 13 and I can’t believe I have completed all the assignments — including the website!

Honestly, modifying the website wasn’t too hard once I had all the proper foundations set up. I think the hardest parts were setting up the child theme, setting up the local host, setting up NameCheap, and then setting up FileZilla. After everything was squared away all I had to do was plug and chug! After all, the final project wasn’t so daunting.

p.s. I got that margin to work on my homepage 🙂

There’s a plugin for that!

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My biggest challenge with my final project was that WordPress made everything seem too easy. I get it, programmers are lazy. Every time I tried to make a customization, I found out that there was a plugin that did all the legwork.  Also, there was a customizer (pretty sure it came with my theme) that worked through all the code and gave me a scary warning message when I tried to access the code manually. I was brave and bypassed it, which allowed me to customize the front page code.

Most of my code ended up being shortcode (that I did still customize) so I felt like I didn’t do the work on my site. My interactive map, which I feel is the pride and joy of my site, took the most work. I spent a lot of time inputting the photos, creating markers and linking to photos. I could not figure out how to make the photos on the markers bigger, so I had to settle with linking to larger photos. Between creating the map and the child theme, I feel like a real coder.

Overall, I found myself scrambling to create more customizations. Some things I incorporated were social media feeds, my interactive map, my resume, a custom meta box that allows to select which publication an article was written for and a contact form. My favorite feature on my site is the hero video. It makes me feel like my site is very modern.

Aside from the difficulties I had throughout the process, I have one major issue. My site still isn’t up because I can’t access the SFTP client.     🙁

Final Go ‘Round

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Creating a website is hard. Throughout the semester, we have technically learned all the tools that we need to be successful. But it seems to be really hard to take my vision of a ‘finsta-like’ blog into an actual website, that makes sense and is user friendly.

My latest struggle has been with my poll plug-in. I’ve searched high and low on the internet to find a solid poll plug-in template that I could base mine off of and have come up empty handed. I’ve had to take everything I’ve gained from the many sites I’ve browsed to create my own and hope for the best. I have the basic format done, which I am really happy about. But, I can’t seem to master collecting results. So if anyone knows anything about that, it would be greatly appreciated.

I experienced some difficulty with CSS, trying to get all my fonts the way I wanted–keeping them  ‘on brand’ with Instagram. At first I was able to download the font but not import it to WordPress, then I discovered that I needed an additional plug-in to facilitate that merger.

I spared you guys most of the crying that was involved. All in all, website creation is an uphill battle that is designed with the brave at heart in mind.

So. Close.

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I’m really close to being happy with my site. There are a few issues I need to work out that I don’t really know how. I get a file upload error (unspecified) every time I try to upload a header for my site.

I was able to embed my resume on my site, but don’t know how to center it since that code lives on WordPress and not in my files. My contact form works. But only if you don’t actually enter any information. I can’t figure that one out at all. When I just hit submit, I get the “Thank you!” response page I created. When I fill in the contact info and hit submit, I get a 404 error. Lol.

I also still need to figure out how to center my social media icons at the top of my site, but if not it’s not the end of the world. 10 minutes later update: I have moved my social media icons to my footer and, hallelujah, they are centered!

Oh, and FileZilla is having a hard time overwriting some of my original pushes. I changed the form action to go to a response page, it works on my localhost (sends me to my live site), but on my live site it sends me back to my localhost. Lol. I successfully embedded a resume, FileZilla updated my live site. However, I cannot get my updated footer and contact form page to update! Even when I overwrite on FileZilla. Update: updating my parent theme seemed to have done the trick!

Anyway, I will keep on chugging and hopefully fix these bugs. Check out what’s cooking on my live site here!

Progress (Sort of)

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My site is coming together. Well, sort of. I have a lot of pieces floating around in cyberspace. The biggest piece, however, is my first customization: the interactive map. I downloaded the Leaflet map plugin, which uses an open-source JavaScript library for creating interactive maps. The API is pretty well documented, but there are some things I couldn’t figure out.

Once I input the shortcode to create my map at the location I wanted it and then created the marker for one of my sites, I was able to figure out how to program it to include photos on the markers. But I quickly realized that I did not understand the interface. Before I installed the plugin, I was convinced that I had missed the mark and that none of my customizations would be code customizations because they could all be done with plugins. When I started the work, I figured out that you can type code into plugins (duh). Then, I realized I don’t understand the relationship between plugins and APIs.

Troubleshooting my map plugin helped to give me a basic understanding. I know that a plugin contains groups of functions and is written in PHP. I know that the Leaflet map plugin uses a JavaScript library. This part confused me. When I was writing code for my map, I was confused about which type of file to create in Sublime Text. I settled on JavaScript but as I was typing my code, my mind wandered to if I should create HTML and CSS files to accompany it. At that point, I knew I was overthinking.

Though the map plugin boasts about its well-documented API, it’s still a little hard to understand for me as a beginner. It has lists defining elements, events, methods, and options, (?)  but I get confused about what exactly to type since programming is very specific.

I also had problems with issues with FileZilla. When I tried to connect, I kept getting an error message.

I have one lingering question. What is the relationship between an API and a plugin?

Final Project — Getting There

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So I really started working on my project last week when I set up a *real* child theme in class. It made life so much easier — all I had to do was inspect element and replace whatever I wanted in my child’s style sheet.

Right now I have even completed two customizations! (Fans hooplahing & cheering in the background.) I was able to add a contact form to the bottom of my site and social media icons at the top of my site. However, nothing really works. I added the PHP for my contact form, but when I hit submit it shows me a 404 error. My social media icons work, but they’re not styled right. I think that is due to a lag with my style.css because I added a new font the other day, but it never showed up so I left. I came back a few days later and it was updated, so maybe my social media icons will come around in a few hours.

Outside of my personal customizations, my FileZilla refuses to connect to the server. I didn’t do anything differently from class either. And the WordPress navigation bar when you “visit site” disappeared as well. Oh, and the menu I added through WordPress doesn’t work. But at least it’s there I guess.

So, this all goes to say. I am getting there. Kinda.

Piecing the Puzzle Together (Lists on Lists on Lists)

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This week, I was challenged. I’m sitting down to put together a list of what needs to be done for my site, because I am lost without a to-do list. Every week, I feel like there is another step to the process that blindsides me and I don’t know where these steps fit into what I’m doing.

As I began the readings about API, it began to make sense. I think all of the readings make sense until I have to actually implement what I read into my work. I know that an API the part of the server that receives requests and sends responses. I know that it is what the user communicates with. The WordPress handbook  helped me to understand how it relates to my site. It could be used for front-end interactivity in WordPress.

The first thing on my to-do list is to create and incorporate my child theme into my regular theme. I’ve chosen Mesmerize for the theme. I need to do deeper research and reading into what exactly needs to be in my child theme. I know that the purpose of its creation is to be able to make changes in the theme without compromising the core of the WordPress theme. Next on my to-do list is to make a list of the code I need incorporated into that theme.

Overall, I think the biggest challenge for me is visualizing what needs to be done, followed by actually doing it.

Getting Back in Order

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After what was a tumultuous couple of weeks for me, personally and academically, I am starting to feel like I’m getting back into a productive groove. With scheduling and organizing it feels good to feel at least somewhat on top of my work.

So I’ve truly begun the process of starting to find modifications that I would be interested in applying to my final project. The contact form example that we worked on was very interesting me, although it may seem like a basic part of an e-portfolio, it helped narrow the scope to things that I deemed to be practical. I’m thinking maybe leaving a comments box on the page could be a plausible idea. Hopefully I can come up with a few more ideas to solidify my modifications and then from there I can put them and motion and get my web portfolio up and running.

The readings this week were informative. I was confused watching the API video, but the article helped to break down the term piece by piece. This is a modification I could see wanting to put on my website. The possibility of being able to schedule an interview or something else through the website could prove to be useful.

Coming up with a Plan

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Another late post, apologies. This week I remember reflecting on the PHP assignment. It was difficult to come back and try to remember what I had learned and make it effective. Thankfully Google is my friend, as well as Professor Linch. So I used a bit of the code from W3 Schools to finish this assignment. It was beneficial to say the least. I did have trouble trying to move my code into GitHub, as usual, but after figuring that out it became a little bit more clear what I needed to do.

As I was doing this assignment, it became clear how much more I need to plan for the final project. As mentioned in a previous post, I had seen some modifications I had seen that were of interests for me. Yet, I am afraid of the difficulty of some the modifications and if I have not only the skill, but perseverance to go trial after trial to make sure its correct. This class has been a process for me. It started off easy-ish, but now I feel the full force of what is coding. At least what I think is the full force.

I look forward to putting these past two off weeks behind me, and making something I can be proud of.