Personal Portfolio: Evaluation
WordPress
I still believe that I have made the right decision to use WordPress to create my personal portfolio website. I have learnt a great deal about HTML and CSS that I would not have learnt had I used Flash to create my site. If I had created the site using Dreamweaver I would have missed out on the functionality of having a WordPress back-end which enables content to be changed and added easily. Having learnt how to create a theme from scratch I would now seriously consider designing more themes for myself and potential clients.
There were a few minor niggles with using WordPress. I found it quite hard to control the layout of the actual content within pages and posts, for some reason space breaks kept collapsing for no apparent reason and it is difficult to control widows and orphans within the type. There are probably plugins to fix these problems and I intend to keep exploring the possibilities so that I can make my website look as good as it possibly can.
I created the website live on the web, primarily because I did not know how to turn my mac into a server which meant that all my mistakes were there for the world to see. If I create another site I would definately look into how to do this offline. However, it was good learning experience being able to see the effect of every experiment straightaway!
I did feel a bit restricted by my limited knowledge of HTML, PHP and CSS which impacted slightly on my overall design. For example, I would have liked to have added more visual navigation links rather than just underlined words, but I just did not have the time to keep experimenting with how to make this work. Over the coming months I intend to keep learning more about these programming languages so that I can keep improving upon my site.
Design
I think I have fulfilled my design aims for my personal portfolio site. I wanted to create a site that was easy to update, user-friendly and did not detract from the work contained within it. It may not have fancy animated features but it works and looks very professional in my opinion. If I was to design the site again, I think I would have spent more time designing the header and the background and possibly incorporated more of a ‘personal’ style. At present I am still deciding what my personal style is and I feel that I will need to produce a lot more work before I will know the answer to that question. I am happy with how my work is displayed within the portfolio and that users are able to effectively zoom-in on the content to see the detail.
Conclusions
I consider my portfolio website to be very much a ‘work-in-progress’ and I intend to keep making changes to it and using it to publicize my skills. I found the construction experience a bit frustrating at times due to my lack of knowledge, but now that I have finished it I am still amazed at what I have accomplished and I hope to keep building upon what I have achieved.
