I spent the next few days looking on the net at various portfolio web sites and trying to come up with some ideas for my own site. I tried quite a few different designs none of which I was happy with. I spent quite some time on it and came up with an initial home page design I was happy with.

I sent my proposed design to a couple of people in my group and asked them for their honest opinion. The feedback I received was that they both really liked the idea and suggested a few things that I could do to improve it.

I spent the next few days implementing these changes and designing the rest of the pages until I was completely happy with the outcome.

I made the decision that I was going to use WordPress as a content management system for the site and try and use new HTML 5 and CSS 3 features wherever possible.

Hopefully with the design and the technology I’ll be using I will be able to create a portfolio that I’m proud of.

I started by looking on the net at various portfolios and gathering ideas for what I would like on my site and what kind of things other people have included. It was at this point it dawned on me that this task was going to be much harder than I thought.

A lot of the portfolio sites I saw I didn’t like and a lot of the ideas that I thought where original turned out to have been done hundreds of times already. I wanted my portfolio site to be original and have some ideas that people would look at and think wow I like that, but so far I’ve struggled to come up with any ideas that are going to give the wow factor.

I looked at well over a hundred different portfolios and still had no idea of what I would like mine to look like. Even now I’m not 100% on how I want my web site to look. But regardless I did some initial wire frames of different ideas of how I thought I’d like it to look. I’ve experimented with these initial Ideas but so far haven’t got one in my mind that I’m dead set on using.

Tomorrow I have a seminar group however to show my ideas where individuals can comment and offer constructive feedback. I’m hoping after doing this I’ll have a clearer idea of exactly what I want the site to look like.

After searching the Internet and looking at various portfolio sites I came across Mark Petherbridge. According to Mark’s portfolio web site he is working towards a Bsc Web Information Systems and Services degree at Sheffield Hallam University and has also done a commercial placement at a local company like me. It doesn’t give a date on this post however so he could have finished the course by now.

The main reason I chose Marks site over the others I found was that his portfolio  web site was actually pretty good compared to the others I viewed. I wanted to produce a portfolio better than the best I viewed and not the worst.

My first impression of the site was that it was clean and modern, neatly laid out and followed a consistent theme. The navigation was easy to find and use and the site used a four column layout throughout.

Upon looking at the site in more detail I noticed the footer was grass, a fence then the body was the sky and his logo was the moon. On the right hand side of the page is a display of stars around a button linking to his portfolio work which I thought was quite clever and looked clean at the same time.

The typography of the site is consistent throughout using the typeface Calibri bold for headings and regular Calibra for most of the body text. More of a personal feel has been added to the site by having little handwritten style comments saying things like “Check out some of my cool & funky work” giving it quite a friendly feel to the site.

The about page gives a nice insight into Mark and his skills and personality, The addition of a picture on this page gives a nice personal touch so you can put a face to the name.

The portfolio page divides the work clearly so you can see exactly what your looking at Identity, Web Design and Print, making it very easy to select what type of work you wish to look at.  The work itself is good showing a range of different skills from design to development.

The contact page displays plenty of different ways to contact Mark from various social networks to his telephone number and a built in contact form allowing users to email him from the site.

From looking at the site overall I found it to be quite good, however I found things I would do differently to make my web site better. These are as following:

• Less columns on the page as there’s too much information in such a short space.
• Not to use white for the entire text of the site as it became hard to read after long periods of time.
• On the Portfolio page display the pieces of work in full not snippets of it in small box’s.
• Have some way of showing what page you are currently on in the navigation.
• Have consistent spacing throughout the web site.

Hopefully taking into account everything I have learnt from looking at Marks web site and implementing the suggested improvements when I design my own. I will be able to create a portfolio that not only looks good but is easy to use and find any information required.

In my last post I mentioned what technologies I might be using to create the site. I’m still thinking that I will use HTML 5 and CSS 3 since these are new and upcoming technologies it would be nice to implement them. I’m thinking of using WordPress as a content management system but still not 100% sure yet.

Word Count: 640

With that in mind I have started to plan the last assignment with me first thinking what I would like to achieve from the project.

I would like this portfolio to show my journey throughout the course and how each assignment has stimulated and developed my knowledge along the way. The main thing I am worried about when showing my portfolio to others is that there are certain pieces of my work I don’t think show my skills at their best and so might not want employers to see. On the other hand though this work plays an important part in demonstrating my progression throughout the course.

One of the other things I have to consider when making this portfolio is that I will be doing my end of year presentation with this portfolio as my backdrop to show people what I have learnt throughout the course.

So it needs to work in two ways one for presenting my work as a portfolio and the other to assist me as a visual aid for my end of year presentation. So with this in mind I need to put quite a lot of thought into getting this to work for both.

In terms of the portfolio itself it also needs to be designed for quite a wide target audience. But the three main groups I would like to target are as follows:

• Employers – The web site needs to be of a professional standard to show future employers my capabilities and some of my best pieces of work.
• Presentation Audience – The web site needs to demonstrate to the audience what I have learned over the 2 years on the course in and easy to follow manner. It needs to show a variety of work from my best to my worst showing the challenges I have faced and how I have overcome them.
• Web Professionals – Web professionals often look at each others portfolio sites and judge that person skills by what the site looks like and the work shown on the site. For this reason I need to make the site display a wide range of skills whilst showing my best achievements.

As you can see from looking at each one of the target audiences each one has specific requirements to meet to give the best impression. For this reason the design and structure of the site needs great care and consideration.

In terms of the web site I would like it to validate to HTML 5 and CSS 3 to W3C standards. I’m still undecided if to make the web site as a static web site or content managed using WordPress. I think this is something I will decide upon once I have thought out the site design and layout.

With all this to think about I can see the last assignment being one of the most difficult and complicated of them all, so over the next few weeks I really need to think long and hard to achieve the end result I require. Hopefully if I do this well I will have something to be proud of.

Word Count: 598

As I mentioned in my last journal entry I was waiting for a book to arrive which I thought would help me with my PHP contact form. On arrival of the book it looked promising, how wrong could I have been. I wasted three very long days looking through the book and following each instruction that I hoped would help me with my contact form. I would never have thought that a forward or backward slash in the wrong place would cause me this many problems. I had looked at the tutorials for so long they were all beginning to merge into one. After hours of getting angry with myself and it, I found it didn’t do what I originally thought and it wasn’t secure. This was one of my requirements.

After scouting through hours of various tutorials and getting more and more stressed as whatever I looked at didn’t seem to be what I wanted. At this point I resorted to compiling my own from using various sections found in different tutorials.

My image uploader and gallery went a lot more smoothly apart from a couple of errors which I managed to sort out with a little bit of help.

I went on to design my website, which I have to admit was the quickest I had ever designed a website. This is not to say that I didn’t spend much time on it, on the contraire I put a lot more time into it than normal.

Next step came the html coding. I was tired and getting myself worked up as I was making really stupid mistakes that I wouldn’t ordinarily make, well maybe I would sometimes. I remembered the advice given by my tutor who said to take a break from my work and get a few hours sleep. When you wake up then you should be able to continue with a fresh approach. So I took the advice.

Getting up at 4am to start my course work again was hard as I just wanted to turn back over and go back to sleep. I knew I had a deadline to meet so had to get my act together.

Baring in mind I have never done HTML 5 or CSS 3 before and also found that I was running out of time to learn it as I would have liked. This meant that I would have to try to learn it as I went along, which I wouldn’t advise.

While I found that HTML 5 was ok to work with, but I couldn’t say the same for CSS 3. On learning CSS 3 I encountered many problems; it was a nightmare and I was struggling to get it to do what I wanted. Just when I thought that I had finished I thought I would test my website in Internet Explorer. My worst nightmare had come true, I found that it displayed completely different. I spent hours searching the internet for some kind of clue as to how to fix it with no luck. I posted a message on twitter and got a lot of reply’s but none of the solutions worked. At this point I was about to admit defeat when someone posted a link to an article by smashing magazine. This article explained that I needed to link to a java script file. This instantly fixed all my problems with Internet Explorer.

I took the w3schools.com PHP test again and scored 15 out of 20. From looking at my scores from this test and the one I took at the beginning of learning PHP you can see a remarkable improvement.

Although I feel I have learned a lot, I still think I have a lot more to learn before I can say that I’m confident in using PHP.

Word Count: 686

I started out by downloading Macintosh, Apache, Mysql and PHP (MAMP) and installing it, this went really well and was installed in no time at all. But as soon as I opened the application I encountered some problems:

• How do I use it?
• Where do I put my PHP files?

I had no idea at all, after playing around with the software for a couple of hours I wasn’t getting anywhere and still had no idea what I was doing. At this point I started searching the Internet to see if I could find anything that would help me, after quite a lot of searching I came across a video by css-tricks.com answering all the questions I needed to get me started.

From there I went straight to the official PHP web site php.net and tried to follow one of their tutorials. I was having no luck, as I just didn’t understand what the tutorial was saying or what it was asking me to do. So after about 2 hours of trying I gave up on it and went onto the second web site I said I would use in my self managed learning plan(SMLP) W3Schools.com. Straight away I found the tutorials easier to follow and the web site explained things in a way that I could understand, I continued to follow these tutorials for a couple of weeks and was quite happy doing so. It was only when a friend asked me one day in a lesson what some things meant I had to admit I didn’t know the answer, at this point I started to get a little worried. I looked back at most of the tutorials I had completed on the W3cschools web site and didn’t have a clue how I had done them or what half of the code meant.

At this point I decided it would be a good idea if I started again from the beginning using the Build your own Database Driven Website book by Kevin Yank. I started following the tutorials and found it a lot more explanatory than the previous web sites I had accessed and actually started to understand what some of the code did.

As I was working my way through the book I started to make my own notes explaining what things did in simple terms for reference incase I couldn’t remember, however I found the book explained everything as it went along it even explained why it did it that way.

I wasn’t very far into the book before I started to learn MYSQL and to use this to create a database with tables to store information in. This was something that I found really enjoyable and quite easy to learn as the syntax was so simple for example to add data to a table it was as simple as:

• INSERT INTO table_name SET
  Column_one_name = “value”,
  Column_two_name = “value”,

Using this the book I then went on to create a content management system (CMS) based on a Jokes database. It started out being very simple just allowing users to add their own jokes and then with time grew to be become more and more complex, allowing authors to be added/edited and deleted. Jokes being added to categories and allowing categories to be added/edited and deleted.

Managing to create the full CMS gave me quite a sense of achievement and left me feeling quite proud of what I had managed to create, even if I had done it following the tutorials in a book.

Joke CMS – Try it yourself

I could now read large sections of code and knew what it did and could even look through sections of code and fix any problems that have occurred.

However due to the amount of time I had wasted at the start doing online tutorials then drifting from web site to web site and finally to a book. I found I was running out of time to learn much more PHP so I thought it would be best to focus on learning what I would need to create my final web site as part of my SMLP.

I had stated in my SMLP that I would create a secure contact form, I was pretty confident that I could create a contact form that would gather the information and send it to an email address but to make it secure I didn’t know where to start. So I looked through the book hoping to find something that would tell me what I would need to do but with no joy.

At this point I started searching online and looked at many tutorials and tried around 3 or 4 but none did exactly what I needed. It was at this point that a friend pointed out the book PHP 6 & MYSQL 5 by Larry Ullman had exactly what I needed. I wasted no time and ordered it straight away but by the time it had finally arrived I had run out of time and I needed to start the final project in my SMLP.

So it looks like I’m going to have to try to learn it while I create the final project which wasn’t really what I wanted to do. Weather that works out or not I don’t know but we will see in my next entry.

Word Count: 938

History of PHP

PHP was created by Rasmus Lerdorf in 1994. It was originally called ‘Personal Home Page’ and was created as a set of tools to make it easier for him to manage his own web-site. He called these tools ‘Personal Home Page Tools’ They allowed him to do things such as monitoring the amount of visitors he had on his site.

What is PHP

PHP stands for PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor and is a server-side scripting language that enables the user to create dynamic web pages. Dynamic web pages are pages that are not static or allow the user to interact with them. Examples of this would be a news page, online game or login system.

PHP is embedded into Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML) when it is read and executed by the server it creates a dynamic web page which is then returned to the browser as plain HTML.

PHP is an open source software that is free to download. As well as being open source it runs on various operating systems which is the reason I think it is so popular amongst the web industry.

It can be used for anything from small applications such as a contact form to full content managed systems that links to a database making it very flexible to use in a range of circumstances.

You can only see PHP working when it is running on a server meaning that if you tried to run it just normally in your browser on you computer it wouldn’t work. For this reason there are many software that allow you to run your own personal server. Some examples:

• WAMP – for use on Windows operating systems stands for Windows, Apache, Mysql, PHP.

• MAMP – for use on Mac operating systems stands for Macintosh, Apache, Mysql, PHP.

• LAMP – for use on Linux operating systems stands for Linux, Apache, Mysql, PHP.

What is MYSQL

MYSQL stands for My Structure Query Language and was originally created by Michael Widenius and named after his daughter My. This is a database management system that when given certain commands will store data or retrieve it from a database. This is often used with PHP because PHP is good for gathering the information from things such as forms and MYSQL is good for storing the information.

MYSQL is very popular within the web community and used on some of the webs most popular web sites these include:

• Facebook.

• Google.

• YouYube

The PHP Test

My plan for my development is to take the W3Schools PHP test at the start and end of my self managed learning plan. From the results of both tests I will be able to establish how much I have learnt over the period allocated in my time management plan and if it has been successful.

My initial test result was 8 out of 20 which I didn’t think was too bad seeing as I had never looked at PHP before but some of the answers I did guess as I didn’t know the answer at all.

Conclusion

Now I know a little about the history of PHP and what it is used for I feel its time to start learning PHP by completing some online tutorials and reading some text books before putting this information into practice.

Word Count: 632

Before I started this assignment I already had in mind that I wanted to learn PHP (Hypertext Processor). The main reason for this is from working at Horbury Design where I am currently on a work placement trying to gain experience in the web design industry. I am able to gained an insight into what area’s of expertise the client requests, a large number of clients request a content management system and to create this requires the use of PHP.

After looking at some local job vacancies it confirmed my initial thoughts were correct and that PHP would be a good skill to learn as a lot of employers listed it in there required skills brief.

“Skills: Drupal CMS , PHP5, xHTML, CSS , Javascript , Zend Framework , MYSQL, Usability/Accessibility”

Looking at these adverts also  highlighted some other skills that could be useful in the future. The job adverts pointed out that other skills such as jQuery and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) were highly sort after within the industry.

With this in mind I decided to focus on the following 3 skills:

• PHP
• jQuery
• CSS

PHP

PHP is a server-side scripting language that can be embedded into HTML documents and is used for a wide verity of things from gathering information from a contact form and placing it into a database to creating full web-site login systems. At the time of writing the current version of PHP is version 5.3.3.

If I was to choose this as my self managed learning plan I would use all of or if not one of the following resources to learn this new skill:

• The book – How to build your own database driven web site.
• The following web-sites - w3schools, php.net and beginnersphp.

CSS

CSS was listed as a required skill on every job advert that I looked at, although I can currently code in CSS2.1 there has recently been an updated version released which is CSS3. CSS3 includes many new features such as rounded corners, multiple backgrounds and opacity just to name a few. Although at the moment it is only supported by a few browsers in the future I believe it will be widely used throughout the web industry making it a valuable skill to have.

“Skills needed – PHP – MYSQL – HTML/CSS – ASP OR ASP.NET – SEO – Photoshop – Illustrator – flash
- Willingness to work in a Windows environment – Solid grasp of Microsoft Office: Outlook, Word, Excel
- Experience working with CMS solutions – Quick learner”

If I was to choose this as my self managed learning plan I would use all of or if not one of the following online sources due to no books being available at this time:

• css3.info
• dzinepress.com

jQuery

jQuery was a skill that I found was required by some of the job adverts I looked at, jQuery is a type of code that is used to add extra functionality and features to a web-site making it more user-friendly.

“Looking for a junior web designer that can be nurtured and grow in to the studio role. Someone one that is eager to muck in, prove themselves and learn.

• 6 months to 12 months experience
• CSS3 and HTML 4/5
• Web 2.0 design
• JQuery + Flash + Cifr”

The current version of jQuery at the time of writing is 1.4.2 and has been used on many things from lightbox’s enabling a user to enlarge images to the centre of the screen with just one click to highlighting text box’s you are currently typing in.

After looking at various jQuery plugins I can see that it is something that could be incorporated into a web-site to make it more user-friendly whilst giving the user a better experience overall. If I was to choose jQuery as the skill I wanted to learn for my self managed learning plan I would use all of or if not one of the following resources:

• The book – Learning jQuery.
• The following web-sites – jquery.com, blog.themeforest.net

Conclusion

From looking at all 3 skills in more detail I decided that PHP would be the one I would most like to learn. This is due to the fact that many clients now want a web-site they can update themselves using a content management system. Because of this most employers request the knowledge of PHP in the job description so learning this new skill will give me a greater chance of gaining employment.

Word count: 743

At the start I found going back into education a struggle after being out of the education system for around 5 years but I soon got back into it and learned all the rules and procedures.

I was quickly presented with an assignment which involved interviewing local web designers and finding out about the industry. At first the thought of this I found extremely frightening, but once I had conducted the first interview I found it was not so bad after all.

I found the interviews themselves were very interesting and a good insight into the industry itself. However for this we had to do a report compiling and comparing all the information I had found. This was something that I really didn’t enjoy doing and with report writing not being my strong point I found doing this quite a struggle but managed to complete it in the end.

One of the next things I went on to learn was Typography. When we first started to learn Typography I couldn’t see the point in it and was wondering why I was learning Typography on a web design course. But soon learned that I could do an amazing design but if the Typography was not correct then it would never be as good as it could be. So from this I learned the importance of good Typography.

When I got started into design I was quite excited that I was actually going to be designing something. This soon changed as I found design was very hard and frustrating I would spend hours on end designing a piece of work just to look at it and think it was not as good as other members of my groups that had spent half the time making it. At this point I was getting worried and started to think about wether or not I had made the right choice joining the course, if my designs were not very good how was I ever going to become a web designer.

I had these doubts for quite some time until I went on to design a home page for the web-site The Magic Circle. This was something that  I had  put quite a number of long hours into . Having not much experience with PhotoShop I found some aspects quite hard to do, but at the end I produced a finished piece of work that I was extremely proud of.

At this point I thought I am improving in design and my understanding of all the principles of design are starting to come together, having produced this piece of work that I am extremely happy with.

This feeling was short lived, I started to doubt my abilities again,wether or not I was a good designer or not. The doubts I was having was that the site took me a long time to make and in the commercial industry I would not be given that much time to design a single page web-site. I was also having doubt’s that maybe the design being good was just luck and doubting that I would be able to produce another good web design again.

This was until I had to create 2 completely different designs for my web-site called Wall Hangers. At the start of creating these two designs I struggled quite badly for inspiration but once I started to actually create them I found it got much easier and ended up with two designs that I was very pleased with the end results. This boosted my confidence quite a bit an reassured me that the magic circle was not just a one off and that I was able to create some good designs.

The thing that I enjoyed doing the most this year was XHTML (Extensible Hypertext Markup Language) & CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). This was something that I found I picked up very quickly and enjoyed doing. The whole aspect of coming in each day and coding away and watching the site take form with each new line of code I entered I found extremely satisfying. For the first site I created I received a merit grade which I was elated about at the time as it was the first one I have received on the course so far.

When I look back at the year I have gained a lot knowledge about design and now know all of the basic principles of design which enables me to produce high quality professional pieces of work.

My English skills have improved greatly over the year in particular my spelling and grammar. I have learned more on this course about English than I ever learned at school and feel it has been of great benefit to me.

The course has taught me things I never expected to be doing, from Typography to print design and even creating type trump cards.

I have found the year as a whole quite hard at times and have sometimes thought about giving up, but I am glad I stuck at it as it has been  well worth it in the long run.

In the future there are a few things I would like to achieve and these are the following:

• Continue to improve and develop on the existing skills I already have.
• Learn new skills like PHP, Java and jQuery.
• Gain employment.
• Work my way up the employment ladder.

Word Count: 998

When I think of an artist I think of people such as Leonardo Da Vinci creating masterpieces paintings like the Mona Lisa for people to gaze upon and appreciate the effort that must have gone into creating such a masterpiece piece of work. Other examples of this include people like Michelangelo creating the great paintings on the Sistine Chapel that was a gigantic 12,000 square feet.

There are some forms of art that people dislike and don’t class as art an example of this are people like Damien Hirst who created The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living. I wouldn’t class this as art because it all appears like very minimal effort compared to something like the Sistine Chapel, in my opinion he has just placed a dead shark in a box which doesn’t portray any kind of artistic skill.

Design on the other hand, I think of people like Jonathan Ives who designed such things as the iPod and the iMac just to name a few. These items were created to look beautiful just like a piece of art but being designed with functionality in mind. Another example of this is Jason Santa Maria who designed sites such as Typekit and WordPress all designed to look good but with functionality in mind.

The thing I think differentiates art from design is that art is created for people to admire and appreciate, where as design is created with a purpose in mind. Wether that would be using a flyer/poster or web site to inform someone or sell them a product.  Design has to be functional while still looking good which I think is the difference between the two. Where as art tends to be created once and lasts for a very long time, design is constantly changed and updated. The iPod for example was released in 2001 and has since had 31 different versions this demonstrates how quickly design changes.

Because of this reason I would say I’m a designer rather than an artist as everything I create has a purpose and function from labels to web sites. When I’m creating I always have the user in mind and how they will look at the label or how they would navigate around a web site. While doing this however I always want to create something that’s visually pleasing to the eye and a user will enjoy looking at.

With this in mind could I be a future Jonathan Ives? Only time will tell.

Word Count: 444