Web Production Reflection
I learned many things through projects one. I also faced many many obstacles that made me almost want to break my computer in half. It is a bittersweet moment when I code something and it actually works. However, since I am still at the beginning stages, I would work on something for so long and it would be the most simple thing. So, I am excited to learn more so that my pages do not seem so boring. However, in all I am proud of getting through the obstacles and figuring this out.
My favorite thing I learned was giving my titles a shadow effect. It is so simple and can also be kind of tacky however, it was really cool to see myself do something cool and unique on the page.
My most difficult challenge was trying to figure out how to put my photos and words inline with one another. When I say I spent hours trying to do this, I literally did.
I think part of the struggles was more so figuring out my tags, IDs and divs, so that is something I definitly need to work on moving forward. I struggled with understanding what to give an id or class and what to put in a div and what not to. However, for all the trial and error I am very proud of my work.
Moving forward, I am excited for the challenge to make my web pages more aesthetically pleasing to the eye. I have found that a lot of this is trial and error and I will eventually figure it out after loads of practice. I am very optimistic in improving on my skills throughout the semester just from how much I learned in one project.
It was definitley not easy. Though it was rewarding seeing things work out after working so hard. I plan to move forward with my current idea of recpies because it was fun sharing some of my go-to recipes. Honestyl, as I am doing my reflection, I feel like I am learning more because I started from a blank page and was able to restart with all my tags and what not, so I really do feel like I am learning through practice.
Project Two: Panel One
During panel one, I was really glad I felt more comfortable in coding. The first project gave me a headache and I felt a lot more prepared while creating panel one.
My favorite part about panel one was exploring a little more all on my own. I feel more comfortable than last project in being creative with different ideas. I loved being able to have more fun with this. I liked playing around with buttons and grids the most.
I loved my carousel of pictures and honestly it was super easy to put in. I though it would be difficult, but now that I know how to link things correctly and where to place certain things, I found creating this slideshow of pictrues to be fairly easy.
Some things I struggled with were trying to not make my site look so cookie cutter. It still looks like a site from the 90s, however I worked super hard in choosing fonts, centering items and aliging things correctly.
I enjoyed using different coulnm and grid packages. It made the placement of pictures and words flow better and also allowed for me to be a little more creative. I used column packages and grid packages to form my panel one. s
Project Two: Panel Two
Of all of project two, this section seemed to be the easiest. Almost too easy... But, going theme shopping was really fun to me!
Honestly, the most difficult part was creating an organized file structure. As many of the themes came with a million things in the files, it sometimes became a struggle and distracting when I began adding my own pictures in the files. Also many of the files and items were unneccessary so it was diccifult navigating through that at first
I really liked getting creative with my writing and placements of different topics in panel two. As I did not have to worry much about customization, I was able to get creative in my photos and words. I love writing so this was really fun to me.
Overall, this was the easiest of the assignments thus far.
Project Two: Panel Three
This panel was really cool to me. I found that I really can make my own website(with bootstrap of course) that looks really great and professional. All while putting my own twists to it!
My favorite parts were working with the gradient backgrounds. It elevated the site and really highlighted my gallery section which was really cool. It also highlighted the titles.
I also liked playing around with the navigation bar as I added a unique hover aspect to it. When hovering over the words in the nav bar, they change colors. I thought this was a simple, yet efficent way to elevate my site in a not so tacky way.
I also played around with Google fonts and even tried out some icons, but the icons were a little difficult. However, working with Google fonts was really cool and I gave my titles fonts from Google.
I am really proud of the small, yet elevated changes I made to panel three. From font colors, changing sizing and moving around pictures changed how the original template looked.
Project Three: Wordpress
I really enjoyed using Wordpress for the most part. Wordpress allowed me to be creative and have structure on each page as well. It was user-friendly in many areas and then in many areas, it was a struggle to figure out some simple things. Overall, I can see why many companies use Wordpress because of the ability to save templates and the sophisticated look of the themes as well.
One of my favorite parts about Wordpress were choosing a theme that matched well with my website idea. The two themes I used at least, were very user friendly in creating posts and pages. I loved how I just would put my stuff on a white board and it would turn into something really neat because of the theme I chose.
One thing I learned how to do was use plugins. I of course used the Woocommerce plugin to make my sneaker site look like a real online shop. However, I experimented with a couple of other plugins as well. I tried to use Elemanator to really jazz up my sports news site, however it seemed I had messed up more than making it look better. Next time, I will use Elemanator from the get-go and it will be really fun to use. I also used a slideshow plugin on my sports news site called, Metaslider. This was a fun way to showcase some pictures and a cool way to experiemnt with a simple plugin. I could see myself using this type of plugin for my Dossier in the future to showcase some of my photographs.
One thing that I found difficult was editing the CSS. It seemed like everything I did that was major just made the websites look worse. That is why the CSS changes seem so subtle when you look at it. This has always been a struggle for me in understanding how to create some CSS style that actally looks good and is not tacky. That is why I feel like Wordpress is perfect for me because I know the basic CSS style! Haha...
I really liked my sneaker site the most. It came together really well and I worked super hard on making it look the way it does. The "shop" portion of the sneaker site looks like a real online commerce site which I was really proud of.
My news site I am also proud of, however this one was the one that caused the most stress. I found it difficult in making each post look a little different, but I feel like I executed it pretty well. I experiemented with a lot of blocks in both of my websites, so overall I am really pleased about both of my sites and their completion.
Final Project: Wordpress Mastery
I decided to go with the Wordpress Mastery section for our final project. I really liked learning about WOrdpress and really think this could be a useful skill to master as a journalism student. I got even more comfortable with Wordpress and am really happy with how my final project turned out. I chose to showcase some of my recipes on my site and hopefully will continue to use it to post more and more recipes and practice more with Wordpress too.
I started my recipe website from scratch. I knew there would be plugins that I could use, however I really had to practice practice practice with them. I used about four different plugins until I decided on the one that I liked the look of and thought was the best fit for the things I wanted to do. I used the WP Recipe Maker plugin. I had to manually customize the plugin to the specific sections I wanted on the recipe block. Instructions, prep time, equipment, the photo and everything within each recipe I manually customized to put on that specific post. After that, it was basically plugging in my information. So, once I mastered how to create the look of each recipe, it was simple. I really like the print and pin options on the plugin as well.
One issue I had with my Wordpress site was the battle between the photo within the plugin and the featured photo. I wanted to use the featured photo because the photo would be with the link to click on the recipe post. However, the featured photo did not look good with the recipe block. The recipe block had its own photo option to put in a photo that fit very well and looked really nice. I had to play around with this a whole lot. Eventually, I found a plugin that once installed would provide a checkbox to check if I only want the featured image showing on the link. This plugin was called Conditionally display featured image on singular pages and posts. After researching how to solve my problem, this plugin made it super simple!
So, one thing I feel like I really mastered is the use of plugins. There is literally a plugin for anything. I even tried to practice using a plugin to make my homepage look nicer. That was a paid plugin, but if I ever got really good at this, paid plugins could be even more useful. I really like how I can install a plugin to help me with an issue ot just make life so much easier.
I also learned how to put my logo on the site. I made a logo through Canva for my recipe website. Through the customization tab of the theme I was able to put my logo at the corner of the page as well as in the tab of my website. I thought putting the logo in the tab was really a cool feature and elevated my site in such a simple yet effective way.
I utilized categories for literally every post that I had. Categories are the root of my recipe site. I know exactly how to use categories and menus to make an effective site. Without the categories working effetly, my site would be all over the place and hard to navigate. However, with the many posts, everything is organized, easy to find and looks clean.
Lastly, I really worked hard on filling my homepage. This was a struggle because I really did not know what exactly to fill my homepage, but I did not want it to look boring and simple. I am really proud of how the homepage turned out. I included some fun images that I had to customize, a featured posts block and a footer.
Overall, I am really proud of this website. I worked really hard on it starting it from scratch. I plan to keep posting my recipes on this site and hopefully become even better with Wordpress to actually make something out of this site.