webJamOct2020

Welcome to my submission for the October 2020 24hr Web Jam for Code Cavern.

My submission can be viewed here: https://kyebrowning.github.io/webJamOct2020/

The criteria and scenario are as follows:

  • Websites may not use templates
  • All websites must be built from scratch
  • You can use any web technology you want except drag and drop sites
  • Any plugins/frameworks are allowed
  • You must submit by 11:59pm October 3rd EST.
  • All pages must have a link that goes to the www.thecodecavern.com homepage

Hello Web Developer,

My name is Chase and I need you to build a website for our Haunted House! We need a way to reach our customers online. They need to be able to see a calender of dates we have available, we do friday-sunday every weekend of october. They need to be able to view prices, $10 for friday and $15 for saturday & sunday. The design is up to your discretion. We do need to make sure you highlight our brand new corn maze on a different page please! Thanks again!

Regards, Professional Business Owner Chase

I plan on posting my learning from my first Web Jam, on October 4th, 2020 after I have gotten some rest from a full day of coding. Thanks for stopping buy and checking it out!

-CKT


Learnings from my first web jam:

  • Creating and working from branches are important. I somehow deleted my css file while working from the main branch, I tried to revert to a previous commit, but no luck. Still new to git and version control, I'm sure I could have saved it but with a time crunch to finish the webpage, I made the decision to start over from scratch.
  • I need to re-visit gridbox. I've used it once in a project a couple months ago and this was the first time using it since. I had a few issues getting things to space correctly and play nicely with other elements in the div. I also forgot on a few occasion that grid does not effect children within a div.
  • I want/need to learn libraries. I built the entire site aside from the small cloud flourish from scratch. I feel like some time would have been saved if I utilized a library like Bootstrap or Tailwind.
  • Though not necessary, I would have liked to find more ways to utilize JavaScript. In the beginning I had high hopes of some site interactivity and prepped a blank JS file in my site infrastructe. I ended up only using one small onScroll interaction that was coded right under the element in the native HTML file.
  • Don't forget about mobile. I just didn't have time to adapt the site for moblie at all, and to be frank, I have no idea what the site looks like on mobile.
  • I need a better game plan, especially with a time limit. I did do a basic outline of what I wanted in each section. I think it would have been helpful to map out my plan and design more and write down some of the elements/components needed to accomplish them.
  • Desining a site with no brand guide/color palette was extremely hard. I actually tooke some time during the day to discuss with other competetitors on how they were tackling the issue. The general consensus was trying to stick to a typical Halloween palette without being too 'tacky'.
  • Google is my friend. I can't begin to tell you how many times I did a quick Google search to address a issue I was having with my code or how certain elements were interacting with each other. I also guess I forgot most basic CSS styles, maybe due to the time crunch and pressure? I found myself also doing quick searches for things like background-image and line-height.
  • Lastly, I can do hard things and the easiest way to eat and elephant is one bit at a time. I have dabbled in some basic HTML and CSS previous, mostly with sites like WordPress and Shopify, but I am currently a few weeks away from completely a front-end web dev bootcamp and wanted a challenge to really push myself and help me see my blindspots. Overall, I found this event and expreience extremely gratifying and educational. Though at times I felt completely overwhelmed and incapable for finishing, the time contraint helped me to rely on my gut instinct and not try to second guess myself. My final site might be super basic and nothing to write home about, I feel accomplished that I was able to create something from scratch by utilizing things that I have learned that last few weeks.

Thanks Dev Dan and The Code Cavern for putting this on! I look forward to the next one.

-CKT