IF YOU CAN DREAM IT, YOU CAN CREATE IT!

I’ve known for a long time that I should have an online portfolio. I have been so reticent to do this because having a big online presence honestly scares me. When I got my degree, the internet was just beginning. Cell phones were the size of shoe boxes and in order to e-mail anyone, I had to go to the computer lab. In addition, we were always taught not to publicize our artwork for fear of copying. Working on this website has been cathartic. I’m proud of the artwork on the pages and the work I put into the site.

One of the reasons I am proud of this website is because I built most of the pages from scratch. The home page is the only one where I used a pre-made layout and adapted it to my aesthetic. One reason is because I had a hard time trying to figure out how to edit the pre-existing layouts. Necessity is a form of invention and it forced me to really delve deep into the Divi Builder experience. The truth is, when it comes to computers, I find exploration is the best way for me to learn. The more mistakes I make, the better I remember how to use the system. Overall, I am happy with the design but there are items I feel could be executed better with more knowledge.

One area I had difficulty with was creating the menus on the page. When I researched solutions, I would try them over and again, but they didn’t work. I was missing a step or two. The menus on this site could use improvement. The main menu is successful, but the menu on my “Work History” page was troublesome. All the menus on that page would only show as hamburger menus on both the tablet and mobile versions. That meant I had 2 hamburger menus side by side, which is not only confusing, but it also looks terrible. My solution to this was to create buttons for the tablet and mobile versions to navigate to the pages I needed. I’m proud that I found a workable solution, but I’m not sure I like the look.

For the most part, I tried to find the solutions on my own, partially because I didn’t know how to communicate what I needed with the correct terminology. I need to reach out to different groups for solutions and stop being embarrassed for my lack of knowledge. For example, I wanted to be able to click on an image and have the details pop up for that image. I spent 3 days looking at videos on “Pop-ups,” “Overlays,” and the plug ins/code needed for each. I had a lot of anxiety over it, but then I discovered a video by accident, and I found a way for it to work as I had imagined. I probably could have avoided all of this had I just asked the question on Slack. However, I did learn a lot researching this issue.

I also had issues with the header and footer. I am very proud that through research, I found a solution where I could create 3 separate headers and footers that only show on their respective formats. This lesson on visibility where I don’t have to have all the information on each format, is something that I believe will be very useful for the future

Since I purchased my own domain and used a hosting service that provides additional websites, I will develop a separate site for my graphic design work/experience. I know that it is best to have separate resumes for different industries; and I believe that will be the same concept for my portfolio website as well. I feel there is so much to learn in this realm, and I have a lot to offer in terms of user experience.  I am grateful that I took the advice to try this class.  It had been very eye opening as to what can be achieved with a little knowledge and a great computer.