CONTENT SITE

While creating my content site, I’ve picked up many new skills. I learned the basics of how to rearrange blocks and edit their individual styles to make the site look more presentable and balanced. I also learned more advanced things like changing my theme to “Marsh Blog” and installing a plugin, called Photo Gallery by 10Web, to display my pictures in a more aesthetic fashion.

Although I enjoyed this process very much, I ran into many struggles when doing additional CSS. When I would use the Inspect element to identify specific elements, the class names would be very long and have multiple words. I did not know which ones to use. There was a lot of trial and error, as I spent a good amount of time putting in different class names in hopes it would work. I would say that was my biggest struggle. Another struggle I had was choosing my theme. I personally wanted this blog to be clean and minimal, so choosing the right theme took me a while as well.

With that, I am very proud of how my additional CSS transformed my site. I changed the colors of words from a bright red to a muted green. I changed what tabs would look like when hovered and active as well. I am proud of how the incorporation of the plugin added to the quality of the site as well. I added embedded videos , images, and utilized different blocks in my blog posts. One of my favorite features is the HTML widget I added on the homepage that has text moving from right to left. “Allez,” “Gamba,” and “Gaja” are all ways of saying “Come on!” in French, Japanese, and Korean. It’s a very common phrase climbers say to encourage each other, and I wanted to add that meaningful touch to the site.

Creating this content site was very rewarding. I am very proud of the finished outcome, and I love the way it looks. I enjoyed making a content site about something I am very passionate about. In the future, I would like to work more on additional CSS and getting used to calling to the correct classes. The WordPress templates are a great foundation, but additional CSS can take your site even further.

COMMERCE SITE

While creating my commerce site, I continued to learned how to rearrange blocks and edit their individual styles. I also learned more on how to edit through the site editor, not the page editor. I kept my site as the “Twenty Twenty-Four” theme and used the WooCommerce a plugin’s search bar to allow people to search for products in my header.

I feel like I struggled with creativity with this site. WooCommerce basically set everything up for me, so it felt like I could only change colors of the site, images, and my fonts. Changing the color behind the quote on my home page was tricky. I ended up needing to add “!important” for the site to react. I also struggled with incorporating Google Fonts. None of the fonts worked, so I used the suggested “Quicksand” font. It’s currently in my CSS, however it reverted to the backup font, Serif.

I am proud of how my homepage is. I enjoyed creating columns to add media and text blocks to display my products. I also linked the image and name to the actual product. Using the WooCommerce plugin, I utilized the “featured category” function to put a sale section. The individual product sites also have a gallery for users to see more pictures. I am also very proud of incorporating the WooCommerce’s search bar plugin into my header. I didn’t want it on the top of my homepage, rather in the header. That took me a while to figure out, but I eventually got it.

Creating this commerce site was challenging, as it made me think of ways to transform the site further than it already was. In the future, I would like to work more on additional CSS.