Web Design and Development

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New class, new month, and new set up! This month I am taking Web Design and Development. In this class, we will be learning all about database-driven websites. I had taken Web Design before this class, so that may help me a little bit, but this involves a lot more thinking, planning, and constructing an actual layout. The reason why it is much more work is that we will begin creating an online portfolio in a self-hosting version of WordPress.

Therefore, I have to go through all my past projects and pick the ones that I think are good to include on my portfolio website. That also means I have to go through all my old blog posts on here, edit them again, and export them from this website, to then import it on the new one. So if you end up seeing old posts resurfacing to the top of my feed, it’s not because they are new posts, it’s because I am editing them all. I am not going to include every single post up to date on that website, but I’ll take some of the best ones.

This blog will not go away, I will continue to use this blog to post for my classes. I will just have to export the blogs and post them on the other website as well. That site will only be up for around a year, maybe less, it all depends on when the professor needs to clean up the server because he is the one hosting it, we just get our site on there. Therefore, I will keep this website just in case I decide to self-host a website in the future or improve this one, I can still have all my work on here.

The more I learn about creating my website, I will come to write a post on what I have learned. Since the class just recently started, this is all I have thus far.

Web Builder Services

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After a long time of trying to figure out what to write about for my final blog of the month, I finally came up with an idea. Have you ever gone to a YouTube video and see an advertisement about Squarespace or Wix, or perhaps even a YouTuber has personally talked about these websites? Well, the topic of this blog is going to be about website builder services. Web builders are essentially websites designed to let anyone create their webpage in a much simpler manner.

I have not used these websites the only one I have ever used is the one I am currently writing on, WordPress. Many of these websites allow the user to customize webpages for their own needs, whether it be a blog or a place to sell their products without the need of having to code everything by hand themselves. These websites are created in such a way that anyone who doesn’t have experience with web design is capable of customizing their webpage.

That being said, is it better to learn how to build a webpage from scratch or is it better to use one of these web builders? I would say that the answer to that question depends on the person. I am more of a do-everything myself kind of gal but I also have my limits and lack of experience when it comes to certain things, web design being one of them. So putting myself in the shoes of someone who has no experience in web design, other than the one class I took on it, I could see why people decide to use these web builders as they are pretty efficient. The good thing about some of these web builders is that some are open-sourced, meaning someone with experience in coding can completely go in and change every little thing to how they want the webpage to look. Thus, these web builders are not only tailored for inexperienced people, but also for designers who can use it as a means to practice, or as a platform to begin their design on.

I would recommend starting with a web builder and if you feel more comfortable and find interest in designing websites, then definitely learn the magic of HTML and CSS coding.

Thoughts on Web Design

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I am a bit disappointed with myself, but only a tiny bit. This is because I had high hopes that I would enjoy my Web Design class, but at the end of the day, I’ve realized that I’ve been slacking quite a bit. I still get my work done don’t get me wrong, but I just lack the motivation and excitement I’ve had with my previous classes when it comes to getting the work done. I’m guessing I’ve found the part of Graphic Design that I can scratch out in terms of possible career fields I would want to do in the future.

This is my third week in the class and I have learned quite a bit. I felt that learning Web Design was difficult and not interesting at first, but once I sat down to do it and start coding and seeing the changes in action was the part that was fun for me. Maybe I’ll change my mind in a distant future about Web Design and take the time to research and learn more about it, but as of right now it is not something that catches my attention.

However, I will go on and mention the importance of Web Design. For starters, Web Design is important to online marketing as many businesses and companies create their websites to advertise and sell their products. A good website design reflects on the company’s image, message, and whether it is trustworthy enough to buy from them. Many people these days use the web to gather their information and do research for things like projects, school work, and the likes so an informative website needs to be interesting enough to maintain the viewer’s attention as well as be factual and easy to navigate. Essentially, the CSS coding is going to be a huge help to make your HTML code look interesting and appealing.

What makes a good Website Design?

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It is getting harder to come up with topics to write a blog about for this month. So for this week, I will talk about what makes a good website design from what I have learned about so far in class as well as from my book.

Any website should be visually appealing but also easy to read and navigate. You can’t overcrowd the website with many things happening at once like very flashy animations and graphics everywhere to the point that viewers are confused by it all.

The goal of your website is to inform people of certain services and keep people interested in visiting the said website. Therefore, if you have links that lead to other pages make sure that the link is set so that it can open in a new tab, that way viewers will be able to come back to your page easily.

It is considered bad design if you need to have people scroll horizontally. This is because many devices can scroll vertically so there shouldn’t be a reason to scroll both vertically and horizontally. When creating the website one of your priorities must be working with the available width, not the height, and make adjustments according to the size of the devices you wish the website be seen on as the dimensions vary between devices.

Then there are also Graphic Design elements that make it a good website design. Things like fonts, overall layout, images, and colors highly influence whether the website is easy to read and if it is appealing enough to continue reading.

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Lastly, but most importantly, keep in mind the loading time for the website. People tend to have a short attention span, if they have to wait more than 10 seconds for a website to load, it is less likely that they will keep waiting to read the contents of the website. Therefore things like image sizes and video sizes should be kept in mind as they greatly affect the loading time.

Reference:

Carey, P. (2016). New Perspectives on HTML5 and CSS3 Comprehensive (7th ed.). United States of America: Cengage Learning.

Web Design

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My new class has started and it is all about web design. I’m not going to lie, just seeing the textbook we were assigned made me scared for the class because of how big the book was and seeing what we had to work with made my brain hurt. HTML code seemed very confusing at a first glance, but it is pretty straight forward once I saw a demonstration of how it is used to create websites. Who knew all you needed was a word processor and a browser and anyone could easily create a website once they become familiar with the language.

Turns out, HTML is a markup language meaning it is mostly used to create the overall layout, contents of the page, and its structure; not necessarily to make the website functional. You need to use CSS to stylize the look of the web page which includes things like adding colors, changing fonts and their sizes, and much more. To make the web page functional in aspects like having a login screen or submitting a form, you need to use a programming language like JavaScript. JavaScript is way more complicated than the first two I mentioned and it is partly why many people, including me, get scared at just seeing any form of coding at all.

Luckily, this class is only going to cover HTML and CSS. However, I have made a note of possibly learning a programming language in the future as it could be highly beneficial for me to learn.