Tag Archives: week14

last touches

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I greatly appreciate all of the helpful comments from the rest of the class. This website is turning out a lot better than I thought it could be due to everyone’s assistance, both aesthetically and ease of navigation wise.

I’ll definitely continue using the site after the class, adding a few plugins to deal with potential spam filtering for comment/suggestion box (as Cory noted).

A major haul I’d also consider doing (granted I have more content to work with) would be adding a footer section at the bottom of each page. It feels a bit empty there now. Apart from the 404 page and contact page, I wasn’t entirely sure I had the chops yet to go too deep into more than the roughly 10 pages I already have.

I think having the chat box would also be a pseudo addition looking back. Practically speaking, it would likely just gather a ton of spam and I would only realistically need it to answer (with keywords) about 10-20 questions in total before encouraging users to answer multiple choice boxes (to filter questions). I’d still like to know how to do that, but for the course of this website, although it was an interesting idea at first.. it seems to be a bit superfluous (as some of my classmates suggested).

Finishing touches

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Last week’s website presentation and review for me have a been a reflection and brainstorming on how to make the changes to the many thoughtful feedback from everyone. Obviously my website is far from where I intend it to be, and will require a lot of tweaking and updates to get it to where it should be. I do, however, remain optimistic as we wrap up the session about my prospects in the field, vis a vis how to build on the lessons from the class into my future works. Key areas will be to revisit the lessons (HTML, CSS, JavaScript, jQuery and PHP) through out this session and to solidify my understanding into the areas I need to cement my understanding. I intend to subscribe to some of the self learning resources that we used for the class like Codecademy, Khan Academy and a host of other reading materials we were introduced to.

It’s been a bit of a challenge figuring out why my contact page won’t show, I know there’s a problem with connecting to the page, I created a a folder and linked it via the folder but to no avail. The funny thing is that I do have an understanding on how this works, but struggling to put the pieces together. I guess that forms part of the developer’s experience.  At this point I remain resilient and optimistic despite my inability to figure the most basic things out.

 

Title X

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Working on my final project has been interesting. I was able to work through most things and make sure I got the assignment done. Once I was done, I wanted to make the site live. I tried everything and I was able to do it. My local site was working normally, but when I tried to run the live site, my CSS was not showing. I think the issue is with my database but I can not figure out where exactly the problem is. Greg and I tried to work through it but still it was not working. I moved the files from local to the live on FileZilla but when I ran the site, still nothing was showing up. As a next step, Greg suggested I get a new domain and host. I got a new one and logged into the new site on FileZilla then I moved the files from the local to the live. When I tried to run my domain, nothing was showing up. I compared the two files (local and live) and they matched but on the browser it was not showing up. I am going to work on this a little more to try and run the file. I am not sure where things went wrong but I know that I mistakenly deleted the file and when retrieved it, something was messed up.

As I think about where we are right now, I feel very grateful to have taken this class. I am not sure if I am going to continue in this field of work. I might in the future, but for the time being I am happy I got exposed to such tremendous information. I am able to understand the basic codes on a minimal level and get around when it comes to inspecting a site or understanding web development.

I do not need to code things at my current job, but sometimes I need to update the website and need basic knowledge of the back end of the site. For example, I need to update the website with new information of an upcoming event. The site is made up in a way that I need to embed the image of the event into the body. I do so by sourcing the text and embedding the code of the image into the text. The body of the text is HTML and I need to know where to put the code. I was comfortable handling such task because of my experience from this class. I am excited of what the future has to bring no matter what next steps I take.

Final Thoughts

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Wow! Are we really at the end of the term? In a weird way, it feels like it has been a long, but short journey. I will admit that this class was a lot more difficult than I thought it would be. There were times when I felt pretty strong in the material we were learning and other times when I wanted to completely give up. I feel like I have a lot more respect for web developers and I think it would be a cool opportunity in the future to be a communications person working very closely with a developer.

I thought I would be extremely proud of the final product, but I ran into the strangest issue yesterday. Although I was updating code and running all the software, my local host would not make updates and it became extremely frustrating. I feel like I might have de-bugged the issues, but I don’t know because I can’t see it. I know that our updates were due yesterday, but I am hoping for peace of mind, I will be able to figure out what the issue is.

Anyways, at first I did not want to do any customizations that would challenge me, but now I am glad I picked ones like the map. I feel like this gave me a glimpse of what it could be like in the web development world. Sometimes there might be a client that visualizes something so complicated and the developer saying, “Oh yeah, we could definitely make this happen,” and then realizing that it wasn’t as easy as they thought it would be. I felt this way when I was brainstorming customizations and then realizing that it wasn’t as easy as following along to a resource online.

Overall, this class could come in handy one day.  I’m sure I won’t think about how frustrated I was in this class, but instead be able to empathize with the developer and agree that web development is no joke!

 

The little things

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I’ve actually really liked the feedback process here. It’s very collaborative and helpful to get the perspective of others who are on my level to get an idea of what they are seeing and what I’m not. I also liked giving the feedback — it was comforting knowing everyone else was having problems similar to mine and I enjoyed helping others get through those problems.

I’ve been trying to button up the little things on my site, including this little dropdown arrow that Greg pointed out, doesn’t appear when the menu is activated. Spoiler alert: I haven’t figured it out yet.

From what I’ve been able to tell, the menu is using a state-based CSS indicator (not sure if that’s the right word) that is hated online. I’m able to manipulate the element by calling the class and adding a box (that’s one piece of customization I did), but I have no idea how to access it when the menu is expanded. I eventually just put a post on a forum for the site and am waiting for a response from the folks who know better!

I’m still thinking of ways to improve the site — I embedded my resume in order to keep people on the site, per Greg’s suggestion, and I’m playing around with more styling like typefaces and getting rid of the bold for hyperlinks.

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.

Not Susan’s Thing

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In this last analysis post I decided to write about the experiences I had during finishing up my project for the past week and the updates I was able to make.

While completing this assignment I aimed to create a prototype website and concentrate on the coding rather than the actual text as well as the easy edits on WordPress. However, after the peer review, I added more content to the blog posts for a more “natural” look of the website. One of my classmates stated that displaying recent comments and archived posts on sites like that is just distracting and makes the layout busy, thus would consider just removing them. My update to this issue included deleting the recent comments on the sidebar, however, I kept the archived posts, since I believe that they are important when searching for content on a blog.

One of the most important improvements to the website regarded the margins. The issue was that the content was stretching all the way across the page, especially on mobile devices. I was able to fix the margins through manipulating the .css on the custom page. The other matter, I was able to fix were social media links, an essential part of any fashion blog. Therefore, I manipulated the footer and added social media icons. I also embedded links on there. Adding a footer at the bottom of the website was also a good idea, since the viewers can have something to reach out to once they finish scrolling.

In general, it was an interesting experience, however, I believe I didn’t have enough knowledge to perfectly complete such a complicated assignment.

What’s Next?

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We’ve finally made it to the finish line! Coming into this class, I wasn’t sure what to expect. My perception of web development was complex coding and lots of nerd talk. My misconceptions were debunked after our first class. I was a little nervous about jumping in, because the only experience I have in the digital realm is with Adobe Software. I really enjoyed learning about the different coding languages and doing the Codeacademy assignments. Even though I don’t plan on becoming a developer in the future, I want to build on my current skills. I want to keep up with Codeacademy on a weekly basis. My main goal is to learn how to manage my time more wisely and asking for help when its needed rather than waiting until the last minute.