Building a Website: Senior Project

Welcome to week 9! We're almost done with school!...But there is always work to do with websites. What Did You Do This Week? For this week's blog, I took my website out for a test-drive and showed it to my colleagues which gave me useful feedback. I showed the website specifically to my friends/co-workers up in IT for Olympic College. This post will share some of that information and how I interpreted it. Having an outside perspective on my website has helped me see improvements that I somewhat knew were there but didn't realize how important they could be. Outside Feedback One aspect of the website that could be improved but not as important is with the theme. Having a dark website looks nice, but it is not always the best. Some suggestions I got from my colleagues were that the website might improve from a white theme as well. I originally had the website in white but liked the contrast more of a dark theme. I guess this means I could make some sort of dar

Welcome to week 8! In week 6, I discussed my Professional Networking Strategy and Job Search / Refinement Plans. This week, I plan on discussing my progress and current state in terms of what I discussed in week 6. What is Your Progress From Week 6? So my main focus for my week 6 job and career goals was to update and look more into my LinkedIn profile. Just a few days ago I took the time to go through and add a little bit more information as well as do a few other things. You can Click Here to view my profile. The main things I did with my account was to change my pictures. Before I had my old default Google account picture which was a really old photo of me. I found a fairly recent, more professional looking photo and swapped it out. Before I also did not have a background image for the banner part. This didn't look very professional so I added a photo I took when I was in California with my family for the first time. I thought it would add a more personalized touch to

Welcome to week 6 after a short break last week! This week, we will be discussing job searching, stategies, and my near-future plans. But first, if you haven't checked out the website in a while, a lot has changed. If you are viewing on mobile, things might be a little broken at the moment. The way I am sharing files is messing with mobile styling and I am in the process of troubleshooting.  If you have been to the website recently, you may or may not have noticed a minor but awesome change. I am now running the site on HTTPS! I also switched blogger over to HTTPS as well to make things more uniform. Anyways, lets get into the post... What is Your Professional Networking Strategy? My main strategy is to try to get to know more people, but mainly just be great friends with my colleagues, so that I have really strong connections. I am not too concerned with having as many connections and networking as possible, but rather, having meaningful connections. With

Hello! Here we are with week 4. This blog post will address more questions pertaining to my project. What is Your Plan and Implementations For the Project? First off, I will start with current plans and how to get the website up and running. To do this, I am going to continually work on the website little by little, preferably working more on it as my deadline for the quarter nears. To help achieve my short-term goals and stay organized, I have made a kanban-style board through my GitHub repo where I am keeping things organized. Below is an example which can be found at  https://github.com/supernick123abc/nickscoolstuff/projects/1 : As you can see, there is mainly a focus on making the website look good, since this will be a portfolio website which will help show off me and my work.  For after-quarter goals, I plan on keeping the website up and running and uploading new portfolio items to it while updating my resume-like-stuff on the website. I may try to implement a for

Hello! Week 3. This blog post will address more questions pertaining my project and my overall IT skills. What Are Your Personal Professional IT Strengths (Technical and Soft Skills? I have various hard and soft skills, with more of a focus on my soft skills and learning capabilities. My skills are as follows: Hard Skills HTML, CSS, and Javascript Java (though it has been 2 or so years) Basic understanding of CMD, VBA, and Linux commands VM and Hyper-V Knowledge Hardware installation and troubleshooting Software installation and troubleshooting Inventory and task management Small amounts of game development Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) skills and audio/video editing skills Soft Skills Can be detail-oriented if given time Easily get involved and "sucked in" to projects Passionate about self-improvement Always looking for ways to do things more efficiently Work well under pressure and stress Growing confidence over time Proficient writing and r

You Moved Again? Yes and no. I am still using Blogger, but with AWS and Blogger together, I have implemented this blog into a subdomain of my new website! You can now check out this blog at blog.nickscoolstuff.com and my regular website (which is currently under maintenance) at nickscoolstuff.com . I am still currently in the process of getting certificates/HTTPS working but I hope to get it going soon. I have gotten an SSL certificate through Amazon and verified my domain, but Cloudfront which helps me distribute my website out to more locations/AWS itself doesn't seem to be converting the HTTP to HTTPS like I want it too. Another problem for another time I guess. What is Your Project? Alright, here we go with proper explanation. For my senior project in the BASIS program at Olympic College, I am making a blog/portfolio website. Why? Because I want to be able to have a platform to express and market myself, while also having something fun to manage on my own.