Spring Project Reflection

     The Spring Project was about creating a website with at least 20 pages. The topic of the website could be one of the following: president, art, or tourist attractions in NYC. I opted to go for presidents since I’m like learning about history and am already familiar with US history. Before any coding, I needed to plan my website. I created a storyboard and wireframe that also contained a general description of the site and a time frame to get the project done. I decided to go for 4 presidents, all from the mid-20th century since it would add continuity/unity to my website. To reach at least 20 web pages, I needed to have 5 subtopics for each president and decided to go for pre-presidency life, life as president, last years alive, quotes, and trivia. Life before presidency was to tell what the president had done before becoming president, life as president focused on the president’s achievements before office, last years alive told how their retirement went (if they had one) and their legacy after death, quotes showcased a few notable quotes, and trivia was fun facts plus a video.

     When creating a project, time was really against me. Researching each president was long and cumbersome to do in such a short time frame. I both needed to gather information and compile them into writing, something that really proved challenging when I tend to put a lot of care in my writing. I also needed to gather assets based on what I wrote, so I really felt like I was hastily stitching up something at times. Nonetheless, I persevered and got to the coding stage. I made a few changes to my original designs based on other inspirations and things I learned about the president. I had 2 general templates, one for the main page or hub and another for the content for each president. At first, I thought it was lazy to just have the same look for every president but then I remembered that I’m trying to go for continuity in my own website. Having a similar look to each page helps me better tell the stories for this one time period in American history and to add to that, from a design standpoint, it creates unity within the website and makes it feel like one whole, so I went ahead it. All that I needed to do after the templates were done was to add the content I developed to the webpages, link them to each other, and upload.

     These skills are important to a web developer because they help us develop large websites efficiently. I needed to get this done fast and the best way to do it was ultimately through creating a few general templates and focusing the rest of my attention to content. Templates not only help reduce time but create unity within a website and might even be helpful in a collaborative environment where the team works off of one template. That way, through looks, the site is unified and whole but through content, it can be distinguished and outstanding.