Tag Archives: final project reflection

Project Analysis… Lord be a fence

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I was finally able to make my website.

This is one of the hardest things I have even done, and I even got help from classmates and Professor Greg. I felt much anxiety with the pressure of this website, but that comes along with much more. While taking this class with 7 others, a lot of things started to run together and I had a very hard time with the amount of task at hand, but that is besides the point.

I received a lot of help from my classmates and that is honestly how I was able to complete the site. In all honesty, I had no idea where to begin, but I believe this is because I genuinely had a lot going on all at once. I knew exactly what I wanted to do, but had no clue how to begin this process. It is really hard for me to ask for help and I think that I can do everything on my own, but really sometimes we need to stop and ask for help. One thing is that I really wish that our professor was more accessible on campus with office hours, but this situation was very different.

The customizations on my site are pretty cool, especially the to do list. Although I had a lot to add to my site, the process I was at seemed very well for what was going on at the time. I learned a lot and eventually began to be able to do things on my own or by following general steps. I think because I am such a hands-on person, it was very hard for me to begin, but once a learned the steps it was doable.

My site needs a lot of work, but I am glad a lot of it is done. Making it live is a very difficult process and that is what I am dealing with right now, but by the end it will all be together.

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 🙂

Finding My Way: Final Project Reflections and Overall Class Thoughts

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Finishing my final project site was the best feeling. When I loaded the final versions of my Sublime files via FileZilla and clicked over to my live site and they actually (mostly) worked, I was shocked and relieved. I was — and am still — a little bit in awe of myself.

I am pleased with what I was able to create for my final project site. As I mentioned in my last post, my modifications included creating a custom post type plugin, rendering a custom metabox, and creating four fields within the metabox that I was eventually able to get to save. I also did a fair amount of CSS styling, including changing the fonts and colors on my site title, subtitle, widget headings, post headings, and body content. I also changed the color of my site’s main navigation bar and put it in a fixed position at the top of the page so that it stays there when you scroll down the page. Lastly, I changed the static and hover colors of the various buttons on my site and added Strava and social media button plugins. Although I wasn’t able to create the lightbox slideshow and featured post carousel that I had initially pitched, I am proud of what I was able to accomplish. If you had asked me 10 weeks ago what a custom post type was and what the steps were to build a plugin, I would have responded with a blank stare. I now know how to create one, or at least what to search for on Google in order to do so!

I’m planning to continue working on my site after the semester is over. I’m hoping to acquire some Adobe Illustrator skills in the coming months so that I can create a custom logo to feature in my site header. In the meantime, I’ll probably make my site title font a little smaller and also reduce the size of the header as a whole. I might also go with a more minimalist color scheme for my site by making my navigation bar the same color as my background.

Looking back on this class as a whole, it has truly been a lesson in problem-solving and troubleshooting. I was already a big user of Google before enrolling in this class, but I can honestly say that I have never Googled so many things in such a short period of time. As the semester went on and my knowledge and understanding of the different coding concepts and programming languages increased, I found myself having an easier time finding the answers to questions simply because I knew what to Google. Not knowing what to search for or where to look as I struggled to build my jQuery slideshow back in June as well as during the early stages of my final project work was frustrating. I quickly learned however, that there are so many resources and forums online that have people asking the same or similar questions. At times, it was reassuring to know that I wasn’t the only one struggling with trying to figure out how to do something.

Thinking back to the very first Codecademy lessons on HTML and CSS, I can see just how much I’ve learned in a short period of time. I went from only knowing how to make a font bold in HTML to creating divs, styling classes in CSS, and using WordPress hooks to create different functionality within my site. The WordPress platform as a whole is something that intrigues me a lot, and I plan to continue exploring all that it has to offer. I learned that there is a WordPress meet-up group in D.C., and I may attend one of their meetings in the future to see what I can learn from more experienced developers.

One suggestion for future iterations of this course would be to start focusing on WordPress earlier in the semester. While I was able to eventually figure out most things on my own, I think it would have been helpful to have a better idea of how WordPress works before I jumped into creating my final project site. I had to do a lot of reading and researching to figure out what hooks and actions were and how they worked within WordPress, and I think that teaching those things and other WordPress-specific concepts earlier in the semester might help future students.

Overall, while I was certainly frustrated at many points throughout the summer and often felt like I was reaching a dead end no matter how hard I searched for an answer, I am grateful for this experience and for being encouraged to dig for answers and find solutions on my own.