You have some grave misunderstanding here, and do not try to fork example project.
Re-read assignment page again, you are supposed to fork empty project with just testing script and nothing else. That script is just there to help you see if you met technical requirements of the page.
As for if person is ready, I would say yes and no. They are ready in terms of technical knowledge, but they are not ready because of lack of practical experience of using that knowledge to actually build their own pages.
But that is exactly what those projects are supposed to give you, practical experience to help you stop “following instructions” and start “using your knowledge on your own”.
I do not know how those projects are meant to be completed, but I think that looking on example is bad idea and I would advice against it. I did same mistake and looked on example of tribute project, and my tribute page ended up looking extremely similar as a result.
Later I switched to doing projects while trying not to look on examples, and I would recommend to pretend there is no example at all, only list of requirements, I think it will help you to be more creative.
In my opinion if you will start of by trying to base your project on example, you will have trouble of learning on how to do things yourself and from scratch, which is skill you supposed to obtain at this stage I suppose.
I would start by first following step-by-step all requirements and creating page that fully passes test without any kind of content or looking good.
Once you have technical pass, take note of what things are must have in this project, close that page and try to create project focusing on design and content now. Do not worry about it passing technical test and focus on design on this second iteration, and make it look the way you want without care for requirements.
Once you are satisfied with how it looks, come back to first project were you met technical requirements and work on making it look same way as your second project, without breaking core elements required for technical pass.
I think this workflow will be best suited for someone trying to learn.
And if you are unsure of where to start, just go look on tutorials from before. It also helps to have “top-down” approach, starting from bigger picture and moving to lesser details gradually.
For example, start by thinking about how page would look in general in terms of sections, and give sections different colors. Like if you are doing it in grid layout, just make something like this:
and here is same thing but after some iterations;
Basically work on general page layout and positioning first. And after you got that part the way you want, move down and work on components inside of bigger containers.
Once you moved down to level where there is nothing to move down anymore, fill containers with actual text and content to see how it all fits and work on how it is located. Keep all the crazy different colors for containers to see how it all works with each other. I see people starting to design their work from start and then wonder where it goes wrong and why something does not fit because they cant see it clearly, since they already started to design it and that hides some information about your containers.
And once you are satisfied with location of containers and layout, work on actual design and colors.
So:
- Work on general page layout and make it look easy to understand by giving your containers
background
colors;
- Make sure that general layout is responsive and add @media rules at this stage
- Move down and work on layouts inside of those containers in same way;
- Fill it with content and work on positioning content and sizes;
- Remove placeholder colors and start designing
It can seem silly to start from colored boxes like in tutorial, but it will help you to start and do proper layout tremendously.
Well, anyway, take my advice with grain of salt, since I am coding person, not design one, my approach to it is somewhat technical I guess.
In any case, I would advice against looking on example before you tried your hand in doing it.