Creating websites for this class has been an absolutely wild ride. From having to learn the basics of HTML and CSS, to figuring out the inner workings of Wordpress, all the way to curating a basic understanding of Java, all while having technical issues throughout the semester, has been absolutely very difficult. With the Final Project, my intention was to begin early and to really get a good stab at the deeper capabilities of Wordpress. I remember enjoying the ability of Wordpress to start with a good template, and being able to curate the design into your own thing. Therefore, I decided that Wordpress would be a good opportunity for me to delve further into it for Project Four.
Reflection Continued
For my project proposal I decided that I wanted to curate a website for the Hispanic Student Association. This organization is near and dear to my heart as I am the CoPresident of the Hispanic Student Association. I have been involved with them for as long as I can remember, and I realized that this organization needed a proper website that encapsulates our values, mission, and purpose. My goal was to create a website for HSA that could potentially be used for years down the line, as I find that one of our main problems is that all of our information is not in one, cohesive spot. Therefore, the HSA website was born for the Final Project.
I started with a simple Wordpress outline for this project, and immediately began customizing it and playing around with different variations of the layout. It took me about two days to finalize putting all of the information into the website, and then starting to actually customize it. My goal for the look of the website was to create a design that was more modern and clean, while still paying homage to the history and importance of the organization with plenty of imagery and plays on words. I worked a lot to make sure that all of the information included was relevant and would be useful, but also not overwhelming.
However, I ran into some problems when I was transferring my domain name from my original portfolio website to my official portfolio site for the final projects. Upon transferring my domain name, I lost access to all of my original website files and wordpress pages that were either already published, or that I was working on. That meant that I lost access to the original HSA Website file that I had been hard at work for the last few days, and that I had to start over. It has been super frustrating trying to figure out how to create a wordpress website without it being connected to my domain. I have managed to build the site back from the ground up, but it definitely is not at the same caliber as my original site!
I will say that this semester has hit me with plenty of technical problems. From my computer screen breaking and me not being able to actually work on my projects, to now all of my websites not working because of the domain change, I have been able to work through all of these problems and get these projects done. I do wish that I could have done more this semester, however I definitely had limitations that I had to work around. I hope that you can appreciate this project for what it is, and thank you for everything!