This website was my first foray into coding a website from scratch. I wanted a place to show off all of my work, both creative and technical (mainly due to the fact that people kept telling me I should have a 1 page CV, and I, as a person, can definitely not be summed up in one page). I am very proud of the broad range of skills I have, and the intense amount of learning it takes for me to get there. This page itself is dedicated to the work that went into making this website, although not in too much detail as that seems like a security risk. Also, this website would not have been possible without the fabulous series of books by Jon Duckett. Not only are they insanely gorgeous books on how to code websites, they are also incredibly useful, taking me from next to no knowledge, to building a website.

HTML

The web pages themselves are coded in HTML. I say this like I had a choice. The HTML was generally quite an easy bit to get to grips with, but faffing around with layout and getting things to sit where you want will forever be like editing a Word document. Unpleasant.

CSS

I probably could have gone more all out with the CSS on this page, but despite all my artistry, I just couldn’t figure out a nice set of colours. So I kept it nice and simple. I wanted my work to speak for itself without the rest of the website taking away from that.

JavaScript

I actually used very little JavaScript in this project. The main uses of JavaScript are the photo slider on the main page, and the photo carousel on some of the projects. This was heavily lifted from the JavaScript book by Jon Duckett. The other JavaScript I added was a single script line to keep my columns nice and tidy. It could have been circumnavigated with an extra div tag, but then I would have even less to write about.

PHP

I was originally told I was stupid for wanting to write a website, and that I would only want to do that if I wanted a CMS and that that was well outside my skill set or something. Well...

Learning the PHP for this was easier than I thought it would be. I had to lean heavily on the PHP book by Jon Duckett to get me off the ground, but once I had the vague idea of what I was doing, things got easier. I wanted the CMS to be able to provide a clean overview of the work I have done, and to give viewers the opportunity to look around and browse, without having to make a million different files on my end. I think it does the job.

Database Design

I originally studied database design at university, so I was a tad rusty. I have tried to follow all the conventions I could remember, mainly about normalising your database to remove many-to-many connections. Some of the database is probably non-functional right now, but there is potential in there for extra features on the website if I get better at coding. Learning to interact with phpMyAdmin was tricky, and took me a lot of trial and error. Part of that is down to me using LibreOffice Base to model my database to begin with. Exporting out of that was harder than I thought.

Image Manipulation

The images on this website are all very simple. There is no responsive design or anything (maybe later). This meant I sized all of my pictures, and edited them myself to achieve the look I wanted. It's not much, but it's honest work. I always have to shout out Paint. It may be a humble little program, but it does most of the work I need it to without being too complicated. Anything paint can't do, Gimp can.

Closing Words

This website was a real labour of love, hate, sweat and tears. Shout out to the Level 2 Diploma in Digital and IT skills for being simple enough that I just edited the website instead of doing work. It may not be the flashiest, most impressive portfolio website out there, but it does the job, and I made it, so I think its cool