Final Project Reflection

So, at the beginning of this project I was not the most enthused about working with WordPress because I just did not think it would allow me to have the freedom with this website that I was wanting. But boy was I wrong. Every problem I came across, I found a plugin that saved the day. Because of that, though, I installed 18 plugins. Each of which I had to go through trial and error to see if they would do what I wanted. Let me walk through the ones I ended up using.

• Blocks Animation: CSS Animations for Gutenberg Blocks – this is how I got all of the content to slide, bounce, rotate, (you name it!) into the page. I was bored with the appearance and thought javascript was the only way I could accomplish animating the pages better, but this plugin did the trick. I had to go block by block to choose the exact animation, the delay, how long the animation would last, and so on which ended up adding a lot of fun movement to each page.

• Gutenberg Page Builder – Kioken Blocks, Content Views, Redux, Ultimate Addons For Gutenberg and Stackable: These were how I customized each page. The last time we worked with WordPress, I was so frustrated because I just wanted the layouts of each page to be unique but couldn’t figure out how to do it. This allowed me to add columns, pictures, the quote carousel, the blue category page on the home screen, the picture of the owner of the website along with her introduction in a fun fashion and so on. These plugins saved me and allowed me to have so much fun deciding on the layout of the website along with not letting the theme dictate the layout and letting me take charge.

• Insert Headers and Footers: This one was fun for me because it meant I was adding some of my own code. This plugin is how I installed Google Analytics into her blog. While I downloaded MonsterInsights, I ended up liking this plugin more when I was experimenting with javascript code to enter. But, every time I added / wanted to add javascript, as I would be googling the best way to complete the task, a plugin to do this task in a more efficient manner would be recommended instead. (example, I had a “contact me” button but then found a contact form plugin that worked much better. But I also left this button at the bottom of the page because I thought it was fun and was impressed with myself for adding some javascript, so no, it isn’t the best addition to the page and the other contact form is 100% easier to use, but I was too attached to my javascript to delete it just yet).

• WPForms Lite: So as I was just talking about, this is the plugin I used for the contact forms instead of having a cryptic “Contact me here” button in an awkward spot on the page.

• MetaSlider: The homepage has a carousel that scrolls through each of the Categories, this plugin made the carousel possible.

• Redirection: Last but not least, this plugin helped make the website much easier to navigate. Prior to using this plugin, when I would click through the categories in the menu, it would take me to a page that named the category, but then to actually read this post, the viewer would have to click a “read more” button – simple to do but an unnecessary step. This allowed me to insert the link of the page that did not need to appear, and redirect the link to the category post itself.

So, outside of the plugins that made this website possible, I must talk about the theme. Initially, I struggled a ton with choosing a theme because, as you know, some themes are just easier to work with than others. One theme would do one I thing I needed it to do but not another. Ashe gave me a lot of flexibility. One thing my roommate really wanted for the website was easy navigation, a way to easily read about each category without having to scroll through one page with every single post. This is firstly why I chose a theme with a search bar, to find posts from specific people super easily, but also I needed a theme that made categories easy to navigate. The first few themes I went through almost refused to make a new page for post categories, and just wanted every post to be on one single page, which made the process of making an easily navigated website very challenging. But, ashe was super simple to work when it came to this, from creating a category, to creating a post, to listing it in the specific category, then adding this category to the menu, and with the plugins I was able to find, everything else fell together seamlessly.

This theme also allowed for a ton of room for customization, more than any other theme I have worked with. So, firstly I decided to add the menu in a sidebar, as well as at the bottom of the page to further allow for easy navigation, a calendar in the sidebar, along with a few of her social media links to make it simple to connect with her readers. And of course, with this customization, I had to spice up the colors of the page with some CSS. With this, I just added some borders and shadows behind the images, a hover over the links, a color to the visited links, and a bounce to the header. The CSS also allowed me to fix part of the layout I was having trouble with. The main menu at the top of the page initially had the categories overlapping one another. So, because of this, I inspected each source on Google Chrome, found the class names, and added some padding to each of the categories to have a wider, easy-to-read menu. I also adjusted the placement of the search bar and night mode buttons so they had a comfortable distance from the rest of the categories to once again make the layout easier to read.

Ultimately, I really enjoyed this project. I can confidently say I now know how to work WordPress like the back of my hand, and look forward to the time I get to work with WordPress again. With the right theme and plugins, it seems like literally anything is possible to achieve in web design with this platform. I will be a fan forever. I also just feel more confident in my eye for html and css, as I was able to add customization of my liking to the theme.