Tag Archives: finalproject

When did we get here?

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As I started to dive into the reading materials for week 7, I couldn’t help but reflect on how far we have come in the course. It feels like just yesterday we were learning HTML and CSS, but here we are at week 7 about to put all the pieces together through WordPress!

When I took a glance at the syllabus, I remember seeing WordPress and thinking about how this class was going to be a piece of cake. Man was I wrong! WordPress.org feels a lot more complicated than the WordPress.com that most of us know and love. It looks like this time I will be in charge of fully customizing my site and making it my own. Since I had a lot of trouble setting up the local host and linking the website, I am pretty scared to see how my final project turns out in the end.

I was incredibly overwhelmed while I was reading the WordPress assigned readings because it felt like a lot of information to fully comprehend. Although I know I will have to revisit the WordPress readings, I feel like they were introduced by our instructor for a reason. From reading these excerpts, I think it is incredible how helpful WordPress.org is in creating documentation entry excerpts that assist users in better understanding customization options.

There are a few things I have taken away from this week’s reading and it all starts with there bring three major components to WordPress: core, themes and plug-ins. From these three components, I should not touch the core function because when it updates as a new version, it overwrites core files. Then, I noticed that “plug-ins” came up multiple times in the different WordPress readings. It seems that  plug-ins will give me the customization that I want for our site since everything goes through it. Overall, it sounds like there are a lot of options for designing my site and I have no idea where to start. 🙁

A Life Surfeited

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A Life Surfeited

I chose the name of my blog with the intent to showcase the activity that fills my life with joy: travel. The past few weeks, however, it has applied more (unforgivingly) to the massive amount of work, homework, and just plain ole life on my plate. Juggling it all, but especially the creation of my final project, has been a lesson in patience and prioritizing. But like with most challenges, I have made it through and am now ready to start planning my next reprieve… a trip to SoCal!

I finally got my website up and running after way too many hours of googling fixes, installing, uninstalling, uploading, compressing, downloading, deleting, transferring, renaming, plugging in, unplugging, signing in, signing out, caching… you get the idea. I ended up having to add a plugin to my local WP site that copied everything and duplicated it on my live WP site (and somehow/somewhere saved it to a database.) I’m still unclear how to maintain the site, which I plan to do, but like everything else, will figure it out. I know we aren’t supposed to make changes to the live site, but just seems SO much easier for a personal blog (not a client site.) But I do want to follow best practices if I can figure out a relatively easy way to copy and duplicate going forward.

There are still many modifications I would like to make to my site, as well as content to be added – again, I plan to actually use and update my site going forward. But for now, I am happy with what I was able to accomplish.

I made quite a few style changes to the parent theme using a child theme, but also through the WP customization tool. A few things I want to do but was unable, after several searches and failed attempts, include:

  • Making the header menu background color (black) run the full length of the page. Right now it is cut up with a gray background. It has something to do with the layers on the page… a site container under another site container, with a row and a banner and a menu in between or over. So if I change one that may fix the header problem, if affects other parts of the page.
  • Make the text in the site container in the banner image more opaque without making the entire page (site container) opaque. Same issue with layering above.

I also modified three plugins to suit my needs: a Google calendar, a world map, and custom comment fields.

  • I am still working on the Google calendar – I have done every step the plugin says, i.e. created the cal, linked to my public Google cal, accessed an API key, but it still won’t display the “events.”
  • I am happy with the world map, as it links to associated posts, but I would like to continue playing with it’s styling.
  • As for the comment fields, I was able to create 2 new fields. One thing I still can’t figure out though is how to remove the WP default field for “Website.” It only shows for users not signed in, but still… I don’t want or need it.

Another thing I’d like to do in the future is make the information/links I have on my Day Dreams page, under the calendar, look like a Pinterest page. I think I will be able to do this, just need to find the right plugin.

Two last thoughts: I didn’t utilize widgets for my final project but would be interested in learning more about them and how I could. Also, I may decide to make a custom post type for my travel posts that include dates of the trip and location (instead of me having to remember to write that in each time.)

So yea, I think that’s it! Way to go everyone! We did it! I look forward to seeing everyone’s blogs this week in class:)

Cheers,

Jane

What a Relief

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After sacrificing many hours and most of my weekend, I think my site is finally in solid shape. If I feel the need, I might add some more modifications to my page but I am now confident I have done my best and finished all I need to do.

This was such a challenging assignment. I had no idea what to do most of the time since I have never been a computer science person. Looking back, it always feels rewarding to be finished because you know you have worked hard for something.

After completing the project bit-by-bit, I have made modifications that were different from my original pitch, which I need to go back and change. Here are some of the things I did for my website:

  • I coded in several images (our firm’s logo and our podcasting logo) and added the images to my WordPress admin.
  • I did some HTML and CSS.
  • I finished a JavaScript slideshow.
  • I embedded several SoundCloud codes.   

Overall, it was so cool to see the final product. Some things I forgot to do was constantly commit to GitHub as I made modifications, but all my code should now be on GitHub. If I make any more modifications, I’ll probably add some of our social media plugins and a contact form, but I wanted to make sure to focus on what I had so far and making it look as nice as possible.

It was tricky doing everything. A lot of blood, sweat and tears went into the project. More likely than not, my boss will have feedback for me as we continue growing our podcast division, but I’m proud of what I have done so far and know I did my absolute best.

I’m looking forward to seeing everyone’s projects and getting others’ feedback.

URL: http://wmgpodcasters.com

GitHub: https://github.com/ibasco/wmgpodcasters

Final-ly done!

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Our final projects are completed, and I can definitely say that this was a huge learning process not only for my coding ability but also my general understanding of the Internet (calling back to our first week of class!) and the various terminologies I’m not familiar with. This was a very challenging assignment — and personally, one that I wished we had been working on since the beginning of class — but the time crunch certainly helped me put myself in the shoes of real developers who are likely given incredible deadlines to get so much more than was expected of me done.

One of the toughest parts of this assignment was simply learning how to Google everything, and realizing that there was a lot not covered in class that I was teaching myself just to get things on my site to run smoothly. Not to say that our class wasn’t helpful — and it absolutely was! — but I think relying on Google taught us the real way that developers learn and troubleshoot their own problems. It was a challenge, but at least it was very true to the real world.

As outlined in my final pitch post, I made the following modifications. Overall I’m fairly happy with the outcome of my website, and I hope I’ll be able to come back to it post-class to make other tweaks later on as I continue to progress in my professional career. Looking forward to reading everyone’s feedback!

  • 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

GitHub: https://github.com/lucynegash/finalproject