Friday, February 6, 2015

Following another quick review, I have an approved Client Project Proposal :) Homesale Proposal.pdf

Adding JavaScript into Blogger or WordPress?

I need to learn how to incorporate custom JavaScript into WordPress and into my Portfolio page on this Blogger site without including all the lines of code.  I ran across two articles that give me a clue. Tuts+: Include Javascript in Your Wordpress Themes and Tuts+: Javascript Usage with WordPress
Basically, two questions:
  1. How to properly link to an external .js file (URL)?
  2. If .js scripts are local, where do these go so they can be referenced?

Thursday, February 5, 2015

No Luck Importing Movie File :(

I tried adding a .swf movie file to the Portfolio page but Blogger doesn't support it.  For now, as a work-around, I added an image that's linked to another site page.   .MOV conversion ended up as huge file, so I didn't upload.  My next move is to try a .swf=>.flv  or .fla=>.flv converter.  Shucks.

Homesale Proposal Draft-v2 Published for Review

Published the second draft of the Home Sale proposal to review with Tammy.
Homesale Proposal Draft-2.pdf

How to Create Memberships for Classmates?

Blogger offers several ways to control comment access. Being that it is a google tool, a main criteria is that commenters must have a gmail account or open the site to everyone.  I'll expect the class to have google accounts I guess.

Wednesday, February 4, 2015

Feedback From Poposal Review

Just finished my Homesale Proposal Draft-1 feedback session with Tammy via GTM.  Thanks for the wise advise Tammy.
  • Since this will be a throw away site, reduce an 'over-achievent' scope.
  • Consider using as a WordPress Theme, hopefully to simplify and reduce price.
  • Too much detail in financial summary. Show main work phases and only indicate the percentage of overall time for each.
  • Scrub the hourly $rate in the chart and only show total project price.
  • Lose the geeky detail from the Objectives section and summarize.  Realize that the Client won't understand or care about developer lingo.
  • Bottom line - make this into a ≤ 30 hour project (not including learning time.)

Homesale Proposal Draft Published for Review

Published my Home Sale proposal as PDF to review with Tammy during office hours.
Homesale Proposal Draft-1.pdf

Test Post via Email

I emailed this post from my MacBook to my @blogger.com mailbox at 3:05 pm

Kowata Tree - Project #2

Project #2, Kowata Tree, is a father/son business that has mostly done custom furniture and has a Kowatatree.com domain, which redirects to the son's site.  The goal is to incorporate an Ecommerce site for smaller furniture products, scope TBD.




Home Sale - Project #1

I snagged a street view from Google maps of the home for sale that is project #1.  Here's the link from Gmaps to street view Link to home on Scenic Drive in Menomonee Falls


Tuesday, February 3, 2015

Set Up Blogger Dynamic Mobile Template

Experimented with the Blogger tool and set up the dynamic view mobile template. Also set up the utility to be able to post from my mobile devices via email for the heck of it.

Blogger View Previews
Thumbnails of site and mobile views

Monday, February 2, 2015

Blogger Search Tool Replaced by Custom Search Widget!

I discovered that the Blogger.com search widget doesn't work and is a known unresolved Google bug. I implemented a workaround by creating a custom search widget that included some HTML code that I found. I now have a working 'Search Intern Blog' widget.  I used the following code snippet:

<form action="search" name="input" method="get">
<input value="" name="q" size="18" type="text"/>
<input value="Search" type="submit"/>
</form>

Blogger.com Customization Using Labels

Figure out how to create separate pages that contain specific posts.  I created pages that are actually links to label groups.  Now all posts are on the main page, and label groups are shown on their own page.  Also figured out how to show some widgets on the home page but not appear on the other pages. I'm starting to feel like I'm kind of a big deal, ha.

Web Design Charges are Adding Up!

Continued working on the project proposal to run it by Tammy ASAP.  I based the proposal on notes during an initial meeting with the prospect and from the survey that he 'mostly' completed.  I went through my visualized workflow to fill in expected work items by category. Then, I tried to keep the timeline to under five weeks, which seems kinda long.

I don't think my outline is way off, and am shocked that @ $24/hour that the 'reasonable' price tag would be as much as it calculates to - over $1500 for ~70 hours.  I doubt that many prospects would pay that much either.   Dilemma ... decrease scope, work smarter (less time spent), lower wage rate, or let 'er rip and learn from any miscalculations to get better on scoping the next project.

Sunday, February 1, 2015

Steinhafels Furniture site is a resource for ideas

Saw a Steinhafels Furniture TV ad during the Super Bowl. They used some transparent sale price banners and I checked out this site since it's related to Kowata Tree objectives. I added the Steinhafel.com link to the reference links since it will be a useful comparison for Ecommerce work on the Kowata Tree project.

Signed up for Adobe Creative Cloud

After researching some animation applications that output HTML I re-discovered Adobe's Edge Animate CC. Since the CC apps have the latest features, I decided to go with the 1 year student subscription ($19.99/month) to learn the new tools. I installed everything and noticed Dreamweaver CC inherited all my CS6 sites :)

ElegantEstate WP template procured

Spent 1.5 hours searching for a Wordpress template that's meant for use for Real Estate listings for my Home Sale project #1. I ended up buying annual full access to all templates on Elegant Themes, with keen interest in the ElegantEstate template. I added the reference link for the template info.

Saturday, January 31, 2015

Blogger.com Internship Site Customized

Created this Blogger.com site, customized, and used the google help pages. Added a resource link. I still need to figure out how to add a new post to a specific page and have it appear on the home page. Right now I have to add a post to the home page, and use tags, but the posts aren't related to the specific pages. Hmmm.