I halted my learning and studying on the second portion of my Ruby on Rails blueprint at Skillcrush for a couple of weeks, as stated in my previous entry. I was finally finished with the desktop publishing portion 1 and (almost) completed the web design/development portion. I just started with the art portion today and posted a sample of it in my Instagram. It’s linked up at the header area near the site title if you want to check it out.
Recent Project: J.R. and Mylene = WIN!
I want to talk a bit about the wedding website. Before I began the initial UI layout, I went around theme shops and other existing wedding websites for samples. I even went to my middle sister’s website that was created and hosted by The Knot. I’ve created websites for other people before, but they were mostly informational. I still have yet to complete an e-commerce site and just recently, I finally created my very first wedding website. I was putting myself in competition with The Knot and other web developers specializing in “feminine”-style sites and wedding sites, so I had to think of a simple (yet informative and to the point) design that would make the couple (and the guests) happy.
I found the common denominators of different existing wedding websites, and because they were brief but important, I went for a one-page 2 design that has all the information and the good stuff right at their faces. I didn’t want a menu, therefore I went for a right “dot” navigation where users can click on a dot and the site (via jQuery) would just scroll by itself. In case that I wanted the couple to do the news and updates themselves, I decided to build the site using WordPress so that they can have an easy WYSIWYG-style interface where they can just fill in the blanks and not worry about the handmade coding. I also decided to use a “starter” theme framework, Divi. I am also using Divi for my rebuilding of my web host’s main site, but I still have yet to get the updated information regarding the price packages. Moving on.
The colors that I used are based on the wedding colors, burgundy and champagne. I also gave a hint of sepia tone on some of the images used. The royalty-free images were provided by Unsplash and Pixabay, except for the couple photo, which was provided by my brother (the groom). I used section separators as introduced by the awesome folks at Codrops, but I also have to give Divi Space for the section separator tutorials specifically for Divi’s complex drag-and-drop interface. 3 I’ve installed some plugins also, most of them are related to the Divi theme. I also made sure that the site is heavily secured and highly moderated, especially with the guestbook. Long story.
As you can see, there will be a photo gallery of the couple, but of course, they’re not available yet. That section will be updated later on in the next month or so.
Sinatra and RSpec: What the heck are they?
Let alone Ruby, I’m sure that the majority of the visitors coming to visit are unfamiliar with new Ruby-related terms: Sinatra and RSpec.
In class, we are still using our past Ruby apps that we built using plain ol’ Ruby from the intro class. Only this time, we will be adding more stuff in them and prepare and design them to be ready for the web. Sinatra is a Ruby web framework 4 that would make our Ruby apps “web-ready,” while RSpec is a testing tool that would test our Ruby apps for any (quirky) errors before we deploy them to the web.
Sinatra, in a way, makes Ruby be like PHP, where we can make templates (via ERB or HAML) 5 and “include” them in the main page. We even used Bootstrap to make our numerology app a lot more “web friendly. In addition, Sinatra is its own server, so whenever we run our Ruby scripts using the Terminal, Sinatra will automatically turn on and its server will be running. In that way, we can test our apps on a web browser using the localhost URL.
No, we haven’t gotten to the part where we can finally upload our Ruby scripts on our own servers so everyone can see them open and functional. For the time being, you’ll just have to settle with the files on my GitHub.
And that would be it! First “full” blog entry since who knows when! Glad to be (somewhat) back to blogging again (at least for tonight)! 😇
On the sidenote…
- My brother does the rest himself, but because his (and his fiancee’s) laptops are busted in their apartment, they had to stop by here to use my laptop to do their invitations and other stuff. In exchange, they bring their all-in-one printer with them because our all-in-one printer is kinda messed up. ↩
- Not really. There’s actually 4 pages: the guestbook, the contact form, and the news/updates archives are the other three pages. ↩
- Just because it’s a drag-and-drop framework, doesn’t mean it’s super-easy to build. It’s a lot harder than you think. ↩
- And yes, it’s named after the great legend, Frank Sinatra. ↩
- ERB can sometimes be called eRuby. HAML is like the HTML version of Sass, so we’re using ERB so we can write standard HTML markup. ↩
September 7, 2016 @ 4:50 pm
The wedding site looks beautiful 😀
September 10, 2016 @ 1:49 am
Aww thanks! Unfortunately, I am stuck w/ one assignment in my Ruby class. It’s not the assignment itself. There are major technical errors that needed some fixing/debugging, so the teacher is figuring out why I got a “faulty” provided template at the moment. I’ve been stuck w/ this one assignment for the last 2 weeks because of it. 🙁
September 16, 2016 @ 1:07 pm
Aw, sucks to be stuck like that. I hope a solution is found soon!
September 18, 2016 @ 2:36 am
I’ve been getting solutions, but it’s still slow. 🙁
September 18, 2016 @ 3:48 pm
Sometimes dealing with code and software can get like that but there’s always a solution