Evaluation of The Elements

I feel this project has gone pretty well, designing the brand and then concepting up the site went really smoothly and I like the designs I created, to which I felt are significant improvements on last years work. My design eye and ability (I feel) are coming along nicely and this is the sector I particularly enjoy the most!

The build of the site went ok, Im pleased I managed to implement a simple CMS into the site, which I thought I might find really difficult, because I don’t particularly enjoy coding. However I do appreciate the need to learn coding and how useful it is to actually know code, so from that perspective it’s a good thing i succeeded in this department.

Finally I’m a littler disappointed with how the final build ended up, due to my lack of knowledge of javascript there were certain functionality aspects I couldn’t repair because of the existing javascript, however as mentioned in the learning curve post, this experience has definitely been noted for future endeavours.

Learning Curve

the learning curve I have been on during this project has been quite immense and breaks down into certain sections;

1. Design – what I mean by this is that I feel my design ability has improved dramatically as compared with previous works, This is due to the introduction of design theory and looking more deeply at other peoples works,. Also using tools like Pintrest for inspiration, I think all this has significantly improved my design ability.
2. PHP – it’s no secret that I am not too keen on PHP, however i do feel I have learned a a certain amount on this, creating a simple cms whereby I can now edit a certain area of text goes quite far to improving my skills n code.
3. Templates – After this project I’m certainly a bit more wary about using templates for building websites and the difficulty it can bring with it. In future I will be looking more closely at what it is I’m getting from a template.
4. SEO – I feel I have a much deeper understanding about how SEO works and the best ways in which to implement them into a site. Through lectures and independent research I found out how certain aspects may or may not effect SEO and also how we can employ marketing strategies which can also impact on SEO

Presentation

elements presentation

Javascript – the problem continues

I’ve had a chance to have a good dig through whats going on the CSS and i have managed to change certain features to what I want, i.e. the main colours of the containers and certain other aspects however the thorn in my side is the navigation.

I attempted to change some of the style and some of the things that are actually in there and it has completely jarred the navigation.

Considering how nice the original template looks, this is a massive step down. I have very limited knowledge of javascript so I’m not sure il be able to rectify this issue. I shall have to look more carefully at the frameworks I use in the future.

Javascript – the big issue

Getting to wards the end of the project and the CMS having been built I found out the struggles of javascript and trying to change things whist javascript is in place. the problem with the template is that it has javascript doing large amounts of the functionality of the site.

If it was just controlling the scroll that wouldn’t be so bad and it would certainly make changing the style easier. However that is not the case. The javascript is calling an arrow, which takes the user back to the top, I believe it is what is controlling the colour change in the navigation and also what is causing a constant mouse hover effect.

CMS continued

This is the section where the post is actually edited, after the user has changed the text to whatever they want it to be then they click submit and it then goes to the doedit function in the previous post.

CMS

For my project I decided I wanted to create a simple CMS that was able to update a certain piece of text within the site.

So this section I’m happy to report works without problems, this is the code that essentially “does” the edit and posts it to the correct container.

The Build

Before I started actually building the main part of this project which is the CMS, I found a nice wireframe to help me with the front-end of the build, is was pretty close to my designs so I thought I would use it as my sites main page.

INvision

I then decided to put my designs in INvision, a concept tool that allows designers to make a model of the site, by placing jpeg files in and creasing certain areas as “hotspots” to allow for button pressing and such. This was my first time using iINvision so I kept it simple by just displaying the look of my sites as a mobile design and what it would look like on tablet.

Design V2

When designing its always a good idea to not have 1 set design, as such I created another design. This one is a less abstract and more professional looking with clear content containers and some imagery to display content. Again the prominent features are derived from the colour palette and for the most part this is more or less the colour version of the original wirframe.