Reflections: Lessons From My First Website

I can’t help but chuckle a little bit whenever I look at the first website I ever developed or at least what is left of it. To say it was unrefined, rough and crude is sort of an understatement. However, looking at the kind of projects I have made overtime and comparing it to that first website it is evident that I have progressed. Started from the bottom, now we are here kinda thing.

I made that website for a 2^nd year unit and at the time I was indeed very proud of the outcome considering I had no prior knowledge in web development. Computers were solely for music and movies and the occasional word document assignments at that point in my life. However, with a little persistence and a bunch of help from some good friends of mine, I managed to produce something.

I would wish to show you that site but I hadn’t learnt the art of Google Drive back then and some kind gentlemen decided to safely keep my device for me before it went live. Nevertheless, I had tweaked that site form the fashion website that it was at first to different website for a different project that I took part in a couple of weeks after completing that unit. I managed to host the latter on a free domain and you can view it here. Now, be kind with the critiques my dear earthlings :)

From that first website, I did learn a couple of things though. It was therefore not in vain! Here are some of them.

A Good Text Editor Is Key

A good text editor is a must have in any computer whether you are a developer or a writer. It will help one to manage code and make it easier to debug. Back then, applications like Dreamweaver, Sublime Text, NetBeans etc. were new to me. Instead, I did the whole code on my plain windows Notepad application! So you can imagine how tasking it was to notice a misplaced punctuation mark.

The Internet Is Your Best Friend

I have come to learn that there is no new developer question or problem that I will have that somebody else somewhere never had before. And the good thing is that they always post them online and their responses are viewable by the public. Hence, whenever you run into a problem, just remember that the internet is your friend and it has all the answers. My go to site is Stack Overflow. Apart from that, the number of tutorials out there is just mind blowing! Download a couple and you will be sure to get some answers on there.

Code Is Re-usable

Without a prior code to work with, I had a lot of trouble writing everything from scratch. But as it turns out, the first website is always like a template. There are some lines of code I have never written since that day I struggled with that initial website. It has always been a COPY-PASTE fiesta for me from then. Iterations are necessary though but they are certainly not as hard as having a clean slate to work with.

Less Is More

My fashion website was cluttered for lack of a better word. I was so excited about it that I just couldn’t help but pile and pile information and pictures on it. It featured tabs on couture runway, beauty, style, health, magazine, sign-up, social network, hair you name it! Enough info for 5 websites, ey? But I did them all under one HTML tag. To say I was trying too hard is being too kind. Hence that phrase, less is always more! So true! Simplicity goes a long way!

Code It Pretty

The same way one takes time to get ready and look pretty in the morning, is the same effort one should put in making their code look pretty. This I learnt the hard way because my friend made me go line by line indenting and commenting the code before he could help me out with it. I’m talking about almost one thousand lines of code! So yeah, do that in advance. Having a good editor will really help in this as tags are color coded and indentation can be correctly measured. Having a pretty code will make it easier to debug and if you get excited by colors and things like sticky notes as is the case with me then you will be more than motivated to work on the project.

 

Maintain Separate CSS and JavaScript Files

Something developers should really refrain from is having inline styling and inline JavaScript codes - A mistake I made on my first project. Except for not having a very pretty code some of the real disadvantages to this include having the HTML code weigh more, poor accessibility to the code especially where for one reason or another the JavaScript code is unreachable, lack of caching by the HTML code, difficult to maintain and make changes to the code.

Inline Styling and JavaScript

Build An Interest

I initially did that website for a school thing. It was practically forced on me. If I could have skipped it, I would have. That attitude went a long way in ensuring that I hated every moment I spent while working on that site. I just dreaded it. But as soon as I dropped the bad attitude and my perception about web development, life got remarkably easier. Therefore, if you approach a project with a good attitude and enthusiasm, things will just start falling into place...even that elusive semi-colon that one can ever seem to remember to place at times.

You Learn New Things Everyday

I don’t believe there will ever come a point in my life where I will confidently say I know all there is to know about web development. Although coming awfully close to that point won’t hurt either, you know! Every day is a learning process. Just now I have discovered something that I didn’t know yesterday. We make mistake and we learn from them. Not to say that my first website was a mistake, but I did learn from it. We only stop learning when we stop living. 

Have Fun

Coding is fun! And it stops being work and starts being a hobby when you finally have fun doing it! If you still feel like you want to shoot yourself in the head even after changing attitudes, practicing and seeking help maybe the programming world is not your main boo. A re-examination of career paths may be the next advisable step. And I almost took this step in the middle of that semester! LOL! 

Practice Makes Perfect

No one ever got good at something by doing it once. Therefore after one project, do another one…and another one…and another one. Before you know it, you can be able to write tags in your sleep. I don’t believe I am there yet but I get closer every day. Practice! Practice! Practice!

What are some of the lessons you learnt from doing a project for the first time? Feel free to leave a comment because I would really love to hear them.

Thank you for reading. Have a lovely humpday!

#HappyDays