Code Your Way - Week 7 (03/10/2025)

Final Project Proposal

The time has come. The time for final project proposals.
The dreaded planning period, but also the time to dream big before we rescope over the next few weeks as finals week comes around.
I had contemplated combining my final project for Code Your Way with another class's final. However, I ultimately decided to stay true to my original goal for class, which was to learn to build my own site.

Project Overview

Personal Website Redesign

​​For my final project, I will build my own portfolio website from (mostly) scratch and understand html and css better, which is something that I did not spend much time exploring during ICM. Currently, my portfolio is hosted on Weebly, a "building block" experience for website creation, which incredibly friendly for those with limited programming skills. 

However, there are limitations to the site building experience and not very flexible for creative decisions, not to mention the hefty annual price tag for web hosting. Through this project, I'd like to learn and train my technical skills in building a site and reclaim a bit of creative, and financial freedom.

Creative Vision

James Jean's website for content management & presentation

• Project images are organized by year - images are horizontal scroll rather than vertical scroll
• Home page images are full window size

Finally, for overall site aesthetic - I like a couple specific things from these brutalist websites

• Limited text
• Clean, concise, almost no embellishments  - This is something that I spent quite a bit of time thinking about, because I find that this aesthetic of the site does not fit my work style or personality at all. However, I came to the conclusion that I want for my work to shine and speak louder, and should my work lean more subtle, I do not want to UI to overshadow the featured work.
• Or perhaps no project specific pages at all?

Other Artist and cool sites to note:

• zaidivecha.com/
• http://because-recollection.com/justice​
• https://nostalgic-css.github.io/NES.css/#
• https://www.yrstruly.uk/
• http://davidpenuela.com/
• https://www.natasjabokkerink.nl/

Technical Considerations

Must-have list

• Find new web-host and separate from weebly
• Figure out if my existing custom domain (purchased through weebly) can be separated, and how? (I want to keep my email address "[email protected]")
• Learn HTML and CSS for more control in the future - Might not be an efficient method - start with the sites from above and "inspect" their HTML and CSS to understand the workings - extract the elements/features that I want to implement into my website and try it out
• Use and become comfortable with Github

Wish list

• To transfer (and maybe rewrite some) blog posts from the past two semesters​​
• design and implement an interesting interactive cursor 
• Mobile layout 

Tentative Draft Schedule

W07 | 03/17 --- Present Project Proposals
W08 | 03/24 --- "Hello World!"

• Learn HTML and CSS by tinkering with Glitch
• Get comfortable enough to move to VS Code & Repo to Github

W00 | 03/31 --- Spring Break
W09 | 04/07 --- Github Pages

• Continue formatting page structure and interactions
• Refine and develop CSS palette

W10 | 04/14 --- Content curation and user testing

• ​Compile project list and assets
  
• Edit existing posts and descriptions

W11 | 04/21 --- Content Curation
W12 | 04/28 --- Porting Domain and linking to Github 
W14 | 05/05  ------------- Final Presentation