Tag Archives: Big Picture

Murphy’s Law?

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It always seems like the closer you get to finishing a big project, the whackier the obstacles in your way become.

When that time comes, I always find it helpful to clearly define my priorities—what needs to happen, what’s do-able, and what’s nice to have. This week, priority one was getting my live site up and running. Surprised? So was I.

I hadn’t looked at my project for a few days. I thought a full step away from the project would give me the energy I needed to finish the final push. But when I logged on to take a look at my site, I saw nothing but the WordPress White Screen of Death. Nothing on the front-end, nothing in the admin.

And that’s how I learned to pull out error messages from the apache_error.log file. After a quick google search, I learned that that was one of the best places to look. I also restarted my server, and realized I couldn’t connect. Queue the next half hour with the EasyWP support team.

Long story short: my site is back up and running, and I only lost a few hours of working time.

But I realized something heartening. If this had occurred a few weeks ago, a month ago, a semester ago, I don’t know how comfortable I would have been conversing with the support team. But I did it! I had done my research, I had concerns that I could articulate and I could answer the questions they asked me. That’s a skill I know I can carry forward in my life and career.

As far as progress on my site is concerned, I’m trying my best not to break things in the process of fixing something else. I’ve fixed a minor menu issue and have a fully-functional Jobs plug-in. Work remains on my Events plug-in, and I’ll need to decide whether to prioritize a bug-free plug-in over one with all of the bells and whistles, but that might not work.

Thank you to everyone who provided feedback on my site. I really appreciate everyone who took the time to give it a look, and have added a lot of those suggestions to my list.

Started From The Bottom, Now We’re Here

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It has been a wild summer semester. I walked into this class (a week late) with unknown expectations for the class, the semester, and the material. To be honest, my only interactions with code were back when we had AOL Instant Messenger and MySpace and I wanted to customize something on my profile. Now, after being able to take a step back, I feel like I have learned so much more. I definitely would not have been able to learn what I did if I attempted to learn code on my own–I need the hand holding at the beginning to get comfortable. While I still feel like a total noob when it comes to code and coding, I also feel a sense of accomplishment for being able to at least (somewhat) understand HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and JQuery and PHP, and being able to create my own site using developer code. Like, what?! I’ve realized that coding truly is another language and I have a greater appreciation for the internet, dynamic and interactive sites and most importantly the web developers on my team. I didn’t comprehend the work that goes into their daily tasks.

As I look back on the class I think there are a few things that I would change to help my fellow Georgetown students on their web developer journeys:

  • Offer this class during a Fall or Spring semester. I think the extra weeks and shorter class times will make all the difference.
  • Continue using Codecademy. I think that was my saving grace.
  • Start the WordPress project from the beginning. Find a way to incorporate the final project from the beginning.
  • Work through Codeacademy-like lessons together in class. W3Schools helped, but I think being hands on would be even better.

I really enjoyed this class. I feel a sense of pride knowing that I have made it out alive on the other side with only several bumps, bruises, and maybe a few tears later. I hope my coding journey doesn’t end here and that I’m able to continue learning and developing these skills, but more on that in the next post!