Final Thoughts: As this term comes to a close, the website renovation (as I fondly call it) has had many unforetold issues arise that I have fought bravely against. Wits at hand, managing code has finally become a sensible character.
The major troubleshooting that no one could have been warned against, was the fact that the template developer had not updated the current code for the twitter feed making embedding very difficult. Both Twitter and Instagram had changed their API (application programming interface) since the creation of the chosen template and the template author did not include this update. Learning from this, I would image other template creators would have similar issues, and will look for it if I have the need of an additional template. Instagram’s new API made it very difficult for a live stream to be implanted into a website. I had to use a widget in order for it to work; looks great though, and it worked out! Yeah! Snapwidget, for those who want to know.
That being said, the template was extremely adaptable to my needs. The simple responsive template that I stumbled across took nearly two and a half weeks to find; but it was well worth the wait. Making and manipulating the site was tedious at times, most especially when inserting more images of my work.
Self representation is always hard. Mostly, I want it to be perfect, but alas, that never happens. As with a website, resume, cover letter, sometimes you just can’t quite capture what you want. One reason I like having a website as opposed to other forms of self-representational social media is that I can show my artwork. This, more than anything, allows me to show who I am as a visual artist. Transitioning from my old website to this new one was a bit hard as well, for this very reason. The previous site was more lucid and raw. The new site has way more functionality, but less personality, I think. This only means that I will not stop until I completely transform my new site into something with similar semblance as the prior! Insert chuckle.
I look to the future through this process, and see myself creating business cards or other collateral to draw people to my site/art. Physical representations of the website and my work. Continually updating the site is important (as is the social media I have created for this project).
Personal Evaluation: My participation in this course was the opposite of minimal. Every week I strived to get at least one complicated thing out of the way and several small technicalities corrected. Though I did not follow my timeline exactly, I think I adapted pretty well. There were some unforeseen obstacles and thoughtful additions that made the structured timeline move towards the back burner as the term progressed. I think it helped to guide my decisions, but ultimately, with the term progressing, I began to have a mental map of how to fix what was necessary, and the timeline aided in keeping that mentality on track. Some weeks were more condensed than others on this project, as working with Dreamweaver for an exceptional amount of time made it somewhat difficult to return to the computer for longer than 3 hours at a time. Personally, working within this new(ish) media, that of digital and web-building, has gotten me excited to work on other projects with the applications used for this project.
I am also very excited to make my logo stamp made!! I hope to make it myself, but it will be a part of my signature moving forward with my illustrations. Smileyface.