Tag Archives: week6

I might love PHP

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This week was a very pleasant change of course. PHP is awesome! I really enjoyed the Codecademy lessons, and I’m excited to implement my final project.

I never thought I would care about back-end development. But this week proved me wrong.

Overall, PHP on Codecademy was much more digestible than JavaScript. I felt like I was able to understand all the concepts, which usually doesn’t happen in the lessons we have.

I’ve said before that I thought I’d like front-end development more, I’ve found that PHP really explains the “why” of what’s going on. I thought front-end stuff would be easier to pick up, but PHP was clear and concise.

This class has been hard. I’ve grown a lot in the last couple of weeks and I cannot explain how nice it felt to understand what was happening. I feel like I was carrying a boulder up a mountain and finally was able to stop and see the view.

I’m looking forward to what we have coming up in the next few weeks. While JavaScript was challenging, and the slide show gave me a panic, this is a much nicer process.

God bless PHP. And God bless America.

PHP, I think I get you!

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This weekend I took the deep dive into PHP. I so appreciate you, PHP for being similar to HTML. I understood how to do each of the exercises–how to add in words using echo and such. However, I don’t exactly understand why PHP and HTML would be used. I assume we’ll get more into that? I understand it on a basic level–like, you wouldn’t necessarily use PHP to specify text color or something, and PHP runs on the server. Not the client. But, this is probably, to me, the most difficult aspect of coding thus far: the idea of “best practice”. I am not yet familiar enough with the general languages and their formats to decide what is most best in a given situation.

I’m really looking forward to diving into my project. I know if will be difficult and my vision is rather grand, but I think that–as you’ve said–the practical application and the self-taught nature of coding can oftentimes be the most effective. I’m quite excited to both apply what I’ve learned to something I’m actually interested in (no offense, Codecademy–I did appreciate the Harry Potter themed exercise), and to learn more based on researching new methods to accomplish what I want to do.

PHP will help me click into JavaScript more readily. There’s something about it that’s more simplified and logical, whereas JavaScript is moving in all sorts of directions and does not seem logical to me at all as of yet. But, in completing the activities I’ve learned that each of the languages requires immersion. It’s the all of them working together bit that seems to be giving me trouble.

The sections regarding loops were pretty helpful. I’d actually like to go back and do them again so that I can get more practice. I think the more I run that concept through my head the more it will start to make sense. It helped to have Codecademy spell it out and explain it at a more practical level because I think I’ve got a grasp on the basic theory from class.

Overall, I appreciated this week’s assignments. It was a moment to come up for air!

PHP Hasn’t Sent Me Through A Loop, Yet

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I say this often, and then regret my words days later, but I did not find this very difficult. PHP does not seem as bad as JavaScript and reminds me a lot of jQuery. Like these two languages, PHP seems easy to use  in the Codecademy setting. Again, like with jQuery and JavaScript lessons, putting the pieces together to create something more complex might be difficult. I imagine having the same issue, struggling to know where to start and how to put the many these we are learning together.

Now for some reason the jQuery and PHP lessons have been extremely buggy. It if had not been for the Q&A I would not have finished the lessons. This set did not have the same impending update warning like jQuery, so the bugs were unexpected and unexplained. I did, however, have to reload the page a few times to make the code work. Even after writing mine identically to the example or the hint, it would not work. Hopefully by next year, or the next time you are teaching this class, they will fix the bugs and cause their students less anxiety with unnecessary error messages. I also hope they add the button that gives the code so that we can see it and try to do it ourselves.

I did do something different this time around. I got the idea from the class forum while we all struggled with jQuery and the slideshow. Instead of just doing the lessons and hoping to remember them later, I began copying the notes and the correct code so I can reference it later. I’m not sure why it has taken so long to do this and I imagine the last few assignments could have been significantly easier if I had.  They will be great as a reference moving forward.

PHP CodeAcademy

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This weeks Codecademy was not that difficult. I found it pretty easy to follow and understand, unlike the Javascript one that was a glitching and took an excessive amount of time to complete.

I found it very interesting to learn all of the different things that PHP can do. For example, it can:

  • evaluate data from a browser
  • build custom web content to serve the browser
  • talk to a database
  • send and receive cookies

I found it very helpful in class when we took time to  really go through again what the servers and browsers do, and how they are able to read the different languages of HTML and PHP as well as others. For instance, the learning of LAMP:

  • Linux
  • Apache
  • MYSQL
  • PHP

This would be how WordPress runs, the platform that even this site was created on.

In class, it was also interesting to learn about the backend of PHP and websites. Professor Linch used an analogy of databases being like tables. The columns are called fields and the rows are called records. These “tables” are all connected to each other through different ids and allow websites to function properly.

I also found it helpful in class when we went through and downloaded MMAP and went through the specific steps we needed to take in order for our PHP to show up. I find step-by-step tutorials better and more informative than when we were just going through the W3 Schools websites and briefly talking about the different types of variables and things we might come across. I am a visual learner and find it helpful to truly break it down to its simplest principle, write it out all together, and implement it to see what the outcomes are.

I think in the future that it would be helpful during class to have more hands on work that we all have the same assignments to work on and we work through them.

WordPress, PHP, You Name It

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Before starting to read the readings about WordPress, I was excited about the upcoming final assignment. I have some experience using WordPress in journalism classes at Wake Forest where I did my undergrad, but I haven’t used it to make something of personal significance. Moreover, it’s comforting to know that we’re not building everything from the ground up, but working off of templates that have been created. I think this will help with making the site more dynamic in nature and focusing on using code to customize the site to fit the subject matter. Not to mention, it takes some of the pressure off of having to think about both the big picture of a site and on a granular level with the functionality. WordPress will make it manageable to be able to do both.

Something that stuck out to me when completing the reading (that are now due the following week), that I think is important is: “Good themes improve engagement with your website’s content in addition to being beautiful.” At the end of the day, while we’re making this website for ourselves, we have to continuously keep the user in mind and ensure that they have a pleasant user experience. Otherwise, no one will want to visit our site. With that being said, in order to do this, I will have to work on both the front and backend of the site to be able to deliver a good site.

It was very helpful to go through each of the readings. It broke down, step by step, what we will have to do, including the taxonomy and naming of the folders. The guides, in particular the Child Themes guide, will be very helpful as we start creating our WordPress sites.

Other important information I noted:

  • WordPress debugging tool
  • Plugin: controls the behaviors of the feature
    • made up of PHP, CSS and JavaScript
    • builds additional functionality to what WordPress themes can already do
  • Theme: controls the presentation of the content
  • Development environment: develop the WordPress environment locally on your server (why we downloaded MAMP) and supplement this with a text editor like sublime or atom.

Surprisingly, I really enjoyed the PHP Codecademy lessons. It made sense. I didn’t feel as lost when I was writing out the code because I already understood variables, strings, functions, etc. I hope to be able to work more in PHP and continue developing those skills because it makes more sense.

Lost in the Sauce

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I knew that missing a class would leave me a little behind, especially in this class. However, I felt completely lost when I started to read the e-mails that were stacked in my inbox for me when I returned from overseas. The blog posts left me even more confused. I really feel like I missed an entire semester. The good thing is that after reading ALL of the blog posts, it because apparent that I wasn’t the only one lost. So in a pack of hunting dogs, I’m going to be the red fox that looks forward and shuts up. Hopefully I’ll blend in until I catch up.

What specifically confused me was just the apparent advancement everyone seemed to make on their personal sites. You all really seem to be pushing ahead. I think by the end of tonight, I’ll be completely caught up with you guys … and by that I mean I’ll be totally lost in my own site. 😉

It seems difficult to decide whether to create a functioning site first, and then tweak it, or try to create a very personal site first. I think I’m going to go with the former, and construct a very basic stie with the WordPress Twenty Eleven theme. No changes, just a flat out copy and past of my information into the theme. Once I do that, hopefully I can go back in and start to change things. I just want to see the site up and running, knowing I made it through the MAMP, CyberDuck, and other program problems, before I start experimenting.

I have actually set up a WordPress site before, through the .org service, and I enjoyed all of the personalization that was available. I think I can catch back up on that quickly, and then start to play with the coding behind them. The funny thing is, I’m guessing the first few changes I make in the HTML and CSS will be things I could have changed just going through WordPress’ personalization menus. We’ll see. Perhaps I’ll have to come up with things that are a bit more complicated.

Fear of Commitment

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I’m having a fear of commitment issue. I know how I want my blog to look, but I’m having trouble vocalizing it, and even more trouble trying to figure out what theme would be the best launching pad. I’m afraid that if I commit to a theme that I later do not like as much as another one, I’ll be stuck.

I’m very excited to keep working with WordPress. I’ve spent a good amount of time going through the themes and beginning to lay out my plan.

What I’m most excited about having learned are the possibilities in general that a site can do. I need to keep myself narrow-minded, though, and focus on certain things and not all of the foreseeable possibilities.

—–

I just finished the assignment to try and create / install a child theme. Consider myself filled with a million new questions.

Anytime I feel remotely confident about something learned, that confidence lasts less than 24 hours until something reminds me that I know nothing. I feel like Jon Snow:

I’m even finding directions confusing at this point. I tried following the WordPress directions on how to create a child theme, and I’m not even sure I did it properly. I’m also not sure how much stuff I was supposed to change, but I tried fixing a few things that I don’t like on the current theme.

The guest speaker from last week was helpful in terms of showing us what is possible with WordPress, but the material was covered so quickly that at the time I thought I understood, but now that I’ve had a week to sit on it, I’m not so sure I can replicate anything that he did.

Actual, factual results

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I like that we are beginning to see results on our own webpages, because the conceptualization can only get you so far. I feel like we have learned a new foreign language (or several!) in a short period of time, and only now are we starting to talk to anyone in those languages.

One of the greatest skills in a work environment (like mine) with coders and management is the ability to be a liaison between the two. Seriously. Coders talk in these funny languages and everyone else talks in English (or French, or Spanish, etc) and usually neither side takes the initiative to try and understand the other. The ability to understand “code-speak” and translate it into real results is a highly valued commodity, and I think that this class is beginning to make it a reality for us.

In my normal coding experience, we specialize so deeply that once we send the code to production, we simply move onto the next project and rarely see the end result. To be honest, I have never really cared because all of the work I do refers to life insurance accounts and how their algorithms work. It has never really engaged me more than the simplicity of my work, and I have always wanted to get out of that business (hence journalism!), but with this class, it has brought me back to why I started learning about computers in the first place. I am very excited about what we are doing, and have already been envisioning building the website to host several things that can be related to a new business and journalism at the same time.

Switching to a Manual Transmission

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When I first tried to host my own WordPress site a few years ago, I didn’t know anything about coding, MAMP, Github, or child themes. Everything was automatic, and I picked out a free theme and did little to edit it. I didn’t love the theme, and I had my own ideas about how it should look and what I wanted it to do. It was, however, simple. There were only a few instructions, nothing extra to download, and it was still free.

Getting out of that automatic mindset has been difficult. When using WordPress, there are shortcuts every step of the way. When setting up my hosting, they offered a one-button install, which I did. It gave my WordPress site its title and immediately let me using the site, but didn’t necessarily make it easier to edit. In trying to edit my website, I found myself back to square one.  In class, we set up a sample webdev final project site, but in making High on Endorphins I had a lot of questions, and not enough answers for the series of questions. What was my database name? My SQL username? Should I enter “localhost” or my BlueHost information, if I was going to be running it through MAMP anyway? Are all of these answers different on my actual WordPress than on my localhost version? A lot of these simple problems were easily answered when we did it together, but now working on my own, Google is providing most of the answers to my questions.

Although Codecademy was a challenge, learning to code is only half of the battle. Simply getting the new code into a working website, using multiple applications and dozens of steps, and figuring out how to make it all run once its written is taking a while to get used to. Once I finally become comfortable with all of these steps, then I’ll really be free to really experiment with the code. For now I’m going to just keep Googling, learning, and practicing.

Making Changes

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I am not sure what is going on, but since Andy’s lesson, I have felt overwhelmed. I really do not feel like I can actually stand-up a site. I am missing structured type of class settings that follow a book and/or a lab. It has been so hard for me to follow and make any progress with my development skills because the class and subject matter has been all over the place. Last week, I went into class feeling like I understood what was going on, this week I am feeling lost. It might have been information overload.

It would be great to use class time to work on our sites.  Maybe we can discuss and work on functionality which is common to all our sites during class. This way we can practice and ask questions as we encounter problems. Some of the key functionality that are probably very important to a class filled with Journalists and Public Relationists are: Social Media links, ability to rate and/or leave comments, registration to gather reader information.

As far as the assignment to create a plugin – I have no clue how to create a plugin. The steps discussed in class last week did not register. I also took notes, but they do not seem to be helpful.

I spoke to a friend last week who is going to NoVa about an introduction to web development class she is taking. One month into the course and the class already has their sites up. They are using Google sites which I am guessing are much easier to use than WordPress or it might be that the course is focused on developing the site and not building developers. As I do not aspire to be a developer and want to continue being an entrepreneur, I wish this class really focused on teaching us how to create our sites and not everything development. Covering all the different concepts which have been covered is overwhelming and I do not feel more of a developer than on day one. I cannot wait for this semester to be over.

Changes that I want to make to my site:

Change the title – to Grocery Coach, font color green, add the company modo below the main heading, modify the tabs row either the row fill or the tab colors. For these changes I will be updating the HTML and CSS files. I also want to add social media capability which i am not sure how to add. I would also like to update the layout of the page, I do not care for the menu too much. I rather have a cover page that just contains a picture, the header, and footer. I want to put details on the different tabs.

Attempt to make updates

I tried to make updates to my site and found it to be confusing. I was not able to find root files, it was a lot of code referring to master files, and arrays. I made an update to the footer in order to not break anything and found that the change which I made did not update on my site (sad face).