Tag Archives: week8

Project Management

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When I was contemplating what to create on my site, and choose for my final project I began thinking first of what code I could realistically change in order to change the WordPress platform. I was having a hard time even thinking of how this could be done. Since I missed the week on WordPress, I was a little bit lost. Thankfully after last class, I understand now that you go into WordPress and actually work from their code to in order to change it. I hadn’t fully grasped that concept and still thought we were writing all of the code and creating our own website for some reason.

This week’s reading have been very helpful and insightful. After I figured out which project I wanted to do, and then learning the proper format to do it, I started thinking about where to begin. I felt overwhelmed and wasn’t exactly sure what should come first, second, etc.

Thankfully, this week’s readings were helpful. I still haven’t really understood all of GitHub’s quirks and abilities, but the reading on GitHub’s site on features for collaboration were extremely helpful on how to think about starting. I was able to kind of get the gist of how you can seamlessly review and add to your code. However, once I go to my site I always get very confused. So I might need to come in early (if work allows) and truly go over how to correctly work with and post to my GitHub account. Right now, it shows a very confusing screen when I try to add anything, so I think I do need to go over that again.

I found the article called Shh! Don’t Tell Them There’s No Magic in Design Thinking particularly intriguing when they began talking about how you need to think about design first in order to fully understand what you will need to do in order to create that design and its features.

 

First Week of Coding My Personal Site

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This week was the first time I started work on my personal site and I have to say, it was fun! It took many hours, and I have yet to see any serious progress, but the act of collecting my materials, selecting my website template, layout the basic building blocks of the site, beginning to research my code additions, and taking a first step at coding a slideshow, were all exciting endeavors.

When I first began my work this week, I was unsure where to start, so I began with our readings, which I think was an excellent first step. Specifically, the story about the stone soup helped me to realize that I was my job to see the big and solve problems one step at a time, as opposed to getting caught up in the ‘magic’ (and overwhelming nature) of WordPress. I also thought it was helpful to hear the authors insights on “design thinking” because I think this is something I was struggling with internally. When we spoke last week, you mentioned that we should not focus so much on ‘design’ at this stage of the game and more on process. After reading Shh! Don’t Tell Them There’s No Magic In Design Thinking I realized that you meant don’t focus on the pretty buttons and colors that will make our site visually pretty, but do focus on the design layout and practical reasoning for design that will make the site function. This helped me organize my thoughts and led me to my first step in the creation process.

I selected my WordPress template and narrowed down the two tabs I will use on my site, ‘Recipes’ and ‘Request a Recipe!’. Then, I choose the recipes and pictures I would use for my site and got those organized into posts so I could see the basic functionality – the home page will host all of the recipes as ‘posts’ each with an individualize slideshow and recipe instructions and the Request a Recipe! page will house the personalized form for visitors to fill out. I think began trying to code the slideshow feature and, I believe I made some progress as I got the slideshow management function added to WordPress, but have not yet figured out how to make the Widget fully functional.

Regardless – I enjoyed working on the code and enjoyed seeing little wins each time I got my code to sync correctly with the WordPress software, so I’m excited to continue my work!

Project Management & Final Project Thoughts

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As far as web development goes, I’ve spent the last week mostly focused on preparing and gathering materials for my final project. I’ve already had to change some of my plans. For instance, instead of being about the process of making mead, it’s now going to be about the process of eighteenth century weaving. It turned out that the day I was in Williamsburg was much too hot to open or really approach my friend’s beehive. (Opening the hive on a dave that’s 95 degrees or above is really really bad for the hive apparently. Something to do with the queen and cooling.)

Of course, this same friend happens to be the weaver’s apprentice at Colonial Williamsburg. She offered to let me come in after the tourists were gone so I could get some photographs. I’m rather pleased with the outcome for the stills, but the videos are just okay. It was insanely hot and humid out, which both made for an impatient photographer and difficulty in effectively capturing good light. I did, however, get one good one of a spinning wheel spinning. It’s pretty cool, and I look forward to you seeing it. There’s some good negative space that I think would be good for a title bar.

Anyway! On to project management. (Thank you very much for recording the class and sending it to me. I greatly appreciate it.) Watching the Agile video really drives home the fact that project management is a delicate balance—especially in coding. I read that Jaclyn wrote that the Agile Manifesto reminded her a lot of the Zen of Python. I felt the exact same way. It had the same clear constructs that attempt to manage and define seemingly abstract ideas.

I also read the article on design thinking—I loved how Jared Spool compared design thinking and designers to the children’s book Stone Soup. It really helped it make sense to me. Also, since my final project is going to be fairly design-heavy, it was a helpful read. (I’m fairly self-conscious about designing things, but I’m also quite picky.) As long as I thoroughly research the issues I face and stay focused on the product, it should be okay.

Project Management and Creating My Child Theme

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The video about agile project management best practices was very timely as I begin working on my final project site. I completed a certificate in project management through the School of Continuing Studies back in 2015 and am familiar with most of the terminology and concepts that were covered in the video and in Greg’s lecture, but I found it helpful to revisit these concepts and think about how to apply project management principles to my final project site. I imagine that the ability to be agile and flexible will be important as I work on my site, knowing there will be some obstacles along the way that I’ll have to work to overcome. The concepts of sprints and iterations might be a good way to approach all of the code I’m going to be writing — breaking the work that needs to be done down into more manageable chunks and keeping to a defined schedule of coding over the next three weeks before the project due date. I’m hoping that devoting six or seven hours a week to working on my site will be enough! I also want to be careful not to try to do more than I had originally planned for and outlined in my pitch post, as this could result in me getting distracted from completing the customizations that are most important to me.

As I read through the Agile Manifesto, it reminded me of the Zen of Python, which was one of the first reading assignments for this class. Both the Agile Manifesto and the Zen of Python espouse the importance of simplicity when working on a project. In terms of my final project, a simple solution can make my site more accessible and user friendly for my readers, which is something that the article about design thinking suggests is critical to creating a well designed, customer-focused site. As that article explains, design isn’t just about making things look pretty, but is also about creating the best and most fluid user experience. Design is something that should be thought about from the beginning, and not simply as an afterthought at the end of the project.

I also started some early work on my final project site this weekend. I purchased my domain and hosting on GoDaddy last week, and after several attempts of uninstalling and reinstalling WordPress on my hosting, I think my site is officially up and running at The Running (G)lover. I followed these instructions to install WordPress on my hosting, and I’m hoping that I did it correctly. I had initially installed WordPress on the https:// version of my domain, but it was very easy to uninstall and then reinstall it to the http:// version instead.

I downloaded the Retina theme from WordPress and have been poking around in the code to see what it looks like and how I will alter it using CSS and my other modifications. My most exciting achievement this week was creating my child theme using the instructions on the WordPress Codex. The process was pretty straightforward due to WordPress kindly providing all of the code to use, but I was definitely confused when reading through some parts of the instructions. For example, the instructions mention that “if your child theme has more than one .css file (e.g., ie.css, style.css, main.css), then you will have to make sure to maintain all of the Parent Theme dependencies,” but it is unclear what this means. There are no follow-up instructions for what to do if your parent theme has multiple .css files. My chosen theme has a main style.css file, but also has a separate subfolder called CSS that contains .css files called bootstrap.css, editor-style.css, and font-awesome.css. I’m not sure if I am also supposed to enqueue these three files in addition to the main style.css file, and if so, I have no idea where to start with doing this. I enqueued only the main style.css file, and my child theme did indeed show up in my local site’s administration panel and I activated it, so I am praying that I did this correctly. Greg and fellow classmates, have any of you encountered a similar issue when creating your child theme, and if so, what did you do?

Now the real work (and fun, hopefully) begins…

Final Project + Project Management Thoughts

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This week we discussed agile and waterfall as two different ways of tackling project management when it comes to working on various web design and coding tasks. So much of our class thus far has been centered around actually learning the material, and I had never really stopped to think how what we were learning in the classroom would be applied to real-life situations, in which we would hypothetically “work in teams” to complete a larger project. I had no clue that people took project management within coding so seriously (from our reading of the Agile Manifesto during class this past week), but I can certainly understand its importance and significance when trying to tackle such a difficult beast. I can also definitely see where GitHub would come into play in these cases, but working with/against GitHub has been one of the hardest parts of the class so far for me, but I value its ability to help people work together and even troubleshoot different pieces of code. I’m not totally sure which category I would fall into if I were a developer in the real world – or if I could even apply it to my own work style now as a PR professional – but I’m definitely interested in reading more and discussing the pros and cons that come with each style.

We have been instructed to work on our final projects this week, as we will continue to do for the rest of the semester, and I have found myself worrying about working against the clock. I’ve been so slow in putting different elements together, going into our WordPress content folders to tweak pieces of code, and testing out different stylistic themes/designs, and I worry that there just won’t be enough time at the end of the day to make my website what I truly want it to be. I’m definitely thankful that WordPress has so many built in style and layout pieces, but when I go in to make even tiny tweaks I’m not totally sure if I’m doing enough to show full customization of my final project.

Technical difficulties come in all sizes. Typically all at once.

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To build off of my last post, I still am unclear about what APIs do for our sites and whether I need to be worried about them or not. But I am confident that I can get some good things working by the end of this project. Also I have signed up for next semester’s class and that makes me feel better to know that I will have more time and teaching to get this perfect (or at least better!). I am a little worried about how little I feel that I have actually done and the looming deadline on July 21st (that is the deadline, right?).

I was having major troubles getting things done on my MacBook and decided to take the leap to Snow Leopard to try and make Github work for me and the MAMP work better for me. This has been a less than fun experience. I am in need of some technical assistance that might be beyond my expertise and I am hoping it doesn’t put my laptop on the disabled list. I am going to be away from the computer tonight, but I want to get this fixed ASAP, so when I get home late tonight I want to do my best to fix it.

If the solution don’t fit, you must acquit!

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I’ve been working pretty aggressively on my project this week and I still feel pretty far from a finished product. The struggles from last week continued onto this week. Depending on someone else for content is a little frustrating but these are struggles we’ll all face in the real world should be end up becoming account managers or project managers for a web design or advertising firm of some sort. I’ve come to the realization that not all the features you expect to have, fit for all projects.

I was keen on including a custom post type. In fact, I already built the thing and installed it onto my local server. I asked my mother/client to snap a few photos from her client’s homes and ask permission to post online. One by one they’ve either refused to allowed her to take photos of their home, or have only agreed to allow one photo of a specific room be used. After this discussion, I’ve come to the realization that my initial thought about creating a portfolio of homes cleaned — from townhomes, condos, and single-family homes — so potential clients could relate to the homes is not realistic. It also doesn’t make much sense to post that information on the web because there is a privacy concern for the home owners. No home is identical to another and the idea that someone could find comparisons between their home and a home in photos, I now realize is far fetched. I have to abandon this idea and replace it for another. Most homeowners make no qualms of posting a photo of a specific room as long as it cannot be traced back to their home. I’ve now decided to use the Instagram API in order to create a page of abstract photos of cleaning supplies or cleaned rooms in order to generate fresh content on the website.

A great lesson for this week is to try not to force something that isn’t natural to the industry you’re building a website for. It’s ok to go back on your initial ideas no matter how late in the game if it doesn’t make sense for your website. In this case a portfolio didn’t work for this industry and you have to learn to adapt and move on rather quickly. In my previous roles as a Social Media Strategist and now as a consultant, I’d get asked questions like “Can you make us a Pinterest?” from a wireless phone retailer. That industry just doesn’t fit in well with the Pinterest audience. I’ve also gotten questions about using Vine from a furniture company. Furniture doesn’t move so I didn’t see a connection between the platform and their industry. This same concept applies to web development. Don’t try to fit a square peg into a round hole.

As a secondary lesson – don’t apply for an affiliate program until AFTER you’ve uploaded your theme and exported your content to your live site. Argh!

AmazonAffiliate

Pages of Posts and Progress

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I think I’m finally starting to get the hang of this.  After spending a few days fruitlessly searching Google for answers to poorly worded questions, I’m starting to figure some things out and make some real changes to my site.  Some are simpler than others; I’ve added plugins to let me rearrange my nav menu, add footnotes to my posts, and let me show off my twitter and contact information.  I’ve done a lot of things that help support the site, like feed my new Twitter account to the sidebar, made myself a self-hosted email address, and even added a favicon so you see my site’s logo next to the url.  I’ve even started written a few posts to test out my new formats, so it’s not just gibberish anymore.

The page of posts plugin that I wrote after consulting the codex is probably the most useful thing I’ve done so far.  I didn’t realize that WordPress wouldn’t automatically do this; I wanted to automatically post every post to the homepage, as well as a copy on a different page (almost a separate, more specific blog in addition to a “superblog”) based on the categories I choose.  This way I can have as many categories as I want, but only have three specific blogs that theoretically should have different content (although they could easily overlap). Although I’m still having problems getting my custom meta boxes to appear, and I’m still struggling a bit with the css and include functions (how do you get your header to be a solid color and go all the way across the top of the page?!?!), I’m encouraged by the progress I have made and hope it will lead to further breakthroughs.  For now I’m going to keep chipping away and hopefully figuring things out on my own until I can get some more pro tips in class. I’m not sure I’m going to get to do everything I originally wanted to do, but I’m discovering the power of plug-ins, and the fact that I’m probably not the first person to want to do certain things for my site.  A few searches for plug-ins and my site is starting to quickly be capable of functioning in the most efficient way.

Bad Planning

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Looking back on the list of things I wanted to do to my site, it couldn’t be any more evident that my planning is just completely off. I intended to have photos and videos from my upcoming New Mexico trip. The only problem is, I will be in New Mexico while the site is due. My hope is that after the first critiques, I will be able to add all of that content in. If that does not work out, I’ll be a little bummed because I’ll either be using seriously old work that I’ve done, or using dummy content to throw in the mix. I can’t imagine me being very proud of my site if majority of it isn’t what I really want to be on there though.

On the brighter side, progress is taking place, very slowly but surely. I feel like I have similar dilemas as other classmates, in being that WordPress allows for us to do so much, that it is difficult for me to think of codes that I want to add in. I have completed about half of the things I wanted to do for my site (although I did it through what WordPress already had available), so my main goal tonight and tomorrow night will be to add my gallery and create at least one button that can be hovered over and look snazzy. Because I feel like there is only so much for me to add to my site code-wise (that is realistic and what I actually want on there), I will try to make significant changes display content as well.

I’m starting to feel like I’m making my site more for grading purposes versus what I truly want my site to look like, but at the same time it gives me the opportunity to play around and see what I like, so all-in-all this is good for me.