Critique My Website

Code Feedback
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Hey guys,

I’ve been searching for all sorts of web development jobs at the moment (full-time, part-time, freelance) and to complement my job search, I’ve worked on my own website to showcase my skills, stuff. I’m looking for some feedback on my website: www.midnitedev.com

Anything to help me improve it would be appreciated. I tried to incorporate almost every good feature I can think of that I can use now or in the future. The next thing to do is just add more content like posts, products, etc.

Also, I’ve been testing it on various web tools for efficiency and speed. I’ve been trying to see if I can improve the page load speed aside from changing the hosting service (budget reasons).

If you get a chance to take a look at this, I thank you for the time and effort. I’m also happy to help out anyone who’s out there trying to make it on their web development career (advice and project feedback mostly) with the current experience that I have.

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The page load speed is indeed pretty terrible. I don’t know if that’s a function of your javascript or the http server you’re running, because the ping time is 10ms (for reference, google is clocking in at 17ms for me). Perhaps there’s an issue with the server software configuration, because that would make every page slow. Alternatively, you could look into cloudflare for a CDN to speed things up.

Very concerningly, though, I get this message:

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, which leads me to a page, that I shit you not, does NOT tell me to use the preference controls built into my browser to turn off Tracking Protection, but to edit the configuration files so that it will never work. What is that about? I would suggest you stop using Heateor immediately.

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Thank you very much for the feedback @vipatron. I haven’t encountered this issue yet but I am currently investigating it. The reason I have this heator plugin, Super Socializer, in my site, is because I want the option to let users login using their social media profile. I’m trying to implement social login on my own custom login page but since I haven’t yet, hence this plugin but after learning about this issue, I’m strongly considering turning it off for now.

Also, I’ve used gtmetrix, pingdom.com, webpagetest.org, and pagespeed insights for testing and indeed I have horrible loading times. I am strongly suspecting that this is my hosting service because I’ve done most of the suggestions requested on the suggested fixes on all 4 tools that I used. The reason I think that it’s them is because of my very high TTFB (between 1.9s and up). I’ve already localized and minified most of my css, js files, am currently using a CDN (cloudflare - :slight_smile: ), use W3 cache plugin, etc.

If it’s not too much trouble, may I know, what device you’re using it on and if you’re using a different web test tool, may I know it as well? Thank you very much.

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Win 10, FF Quantum 64.0, Gigabit internet through a VPN where I get 90 down/ 150 up (tested just now). I load every link on this and other forums in a private browsing window for exactly situations like heateor. Have you tried turning it off, or testing out some very simple static pages? I know the big “innovation” that Firefox made with Quantum was loading all the tracking scripts last. If you could get a baseline without it, and get some statistics, you could see if the social tracking plugin is your problem.

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Tested it on an incognito window on Firefox and saw that issue you mentioned. I disabled the heator plugin and saw this issue disappear so and a little bit of improvement on the page test tools results.

From my standpoint though, I’m conflicted whether I should disable this plugin based on this issue. One one hand, it exists and causes some performance trouble on the website. On the other, it’s something that provides a convenience to the user, has somewhat negligible performance impact, and affects users that uses firefox in an uncommon setting (idk how many users use firefox in private settings, but it can’t be more than firefox in regular settings).

I’ll figure it out, but I really do appreciate you catching this problem. I never encountered it until now.

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Well, as long as it’s negligible in terms of performance.

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Yeah and hopefully it stays that way. Only time will tell though :smiley:.

Tbh, I do not like using plugins because most of the time, I really want to figure out how to do a specific feature. But it’s a necessary evil sometimes.

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How much control do you have over the backend? Can you change the http server from Apache to nginx or vice versa? Is there some free hosting that you could copy your source onto temporarily to see if the same setup on a different machine exposes a source of variability in speed?

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I can modify up to the .htaccess file and other files residing in the same directory. I also have some flexibility on the php.ini, and that’s about the only file I can modify and not even too much because some changes like the file_upload_size doesn’t even reflect correctly (updated it to more than 20MB but it still wouldn’t change on the wordpress migration plugin’s ui - hosting told me this is intended and I have to upgrade to vps hosting to increase this). As far as http server changes, I’m stuck with Apache.

As far as free hosting to temporarily copy my source code, which specific source are you referring to? If you mean the whole wp site contents, then I know 000webhost but I’m not an expert on site migration. I’m not sure but I think they only allow specific upload size as well so I would have to do the site migration without using a plugin.

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Well, that’s your problem, I think. I mean, Wordpress is a useful skill for CMS-based sites, but after the initial setup, they are largely user-run, excepting security updates and redesigns. Were I trying to show off my front-end skills, I would write a personal portfolio that is lean and shows off my virtuosity with my best technology (React, in my case). Were I trying to do back end, I’d show some computation-heavy thing on a VPS (which you can buy for $5/mo). Were I trying to do both, again, the VPS is key. As for Wordpress skills, which are still marketable, I would say that being able to stand up multiple examples of WP sites that use different plugins to achieve different functionality (a hospital vs. an online business vs. a community group, e.g.) and most importantly, SECURE those sites, would be the skills on which I would based my selling of myself to potential clients. A video showing how a user in marketing would add a new article about an award the hospital got, or how the secretary could publicize a new event that the community group was hosting without having to mess with any admin stuff would go a long way to sell that. A face helps, but even if you don’t have a webcam, the video hosting can be on Youtube for free.

I’m not sure which skill set you’re trying to play up, but a little investment in yourself is worth it. Remember: advertising isn’t a waste of money, its purpose is to become more customers.

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I’m doing a little bit of both, I guess. I’m by no means an expert on being a full-stack developer or wordpress developer but I have had the experience of completing projects using technologies for both of them. I guess you could say I’m trying to be a generalist although I hear more and more that to be successful you have to have a niche and just focus on it until you become really good.

You’re right about the advertising part. I find it more and more important given the social media age. I’m kind of shy but that’s one of the reasons why I’m starting to post my completed projects more, to gain traction and an audience to a business I can see thriving in the future. Videos are something I’ve been looking into for the longest time and plan to incorporate but for now I’m focusing on coded/written works.

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Hi @midnitedev101, i am sure you get already several constructive feedback’s.
All i want to say is your website is awesome, this is my opinion. It was the first impression that hit me when i took the very first look!
Awesome job, keep up the good work!

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@AdrianJ Thanks very much! I’m happy that you like it and I will keep working on it to make it better.

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You say you are looking for web development jobs yet you are using Wordpress - the Divi theme and 6 plugins. What skills do you have?

Have you decided on a niche for your site as yet? What does offering video games for me to play have to do with web dev?

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hey overall your web site is good .you have put lot of efforts to do it.

but one suggestion i have checked your website page speed and performance ,it is little bit low .
i have used pageinsights and lighthouse . this is also matters a lot in web dev

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Hi @Don-E-S I am indeed looking for web development jobs and Wordpress is part of it. For the Wordpress CMS, you have to know css styling, plugin modification through either javascript, php or mysql (however it requires), and configuration of themes such as Divi to custom pages, headers, footers, etc. to make your layout look according to how you want it (not just by using the theme UI).

You can can also get creative and include whatever content you want like this rotating terrain (made with three.js) I included at one point on the homepage but decided to remove because it was making the web page loading speed slow by a great deal: https://codepen.io/qwirkyrabbit/full/xQaoBX

Further than that, in wordpress, you have to know how to troubleshoot errors in both consoles and php error logs, everytime it happens, when updating plugins or themes or add new custom code, etc. You also have to worry about how to deal with optimizing load speed and performance on your website.

When I first started the website, the total load time was around 12s - 18s, and currently, after a lot of troubleshooting and tinkering, it’s now down to 6s - 8s. Still not optimal by any means but a great deal better than before.

Also, a lot of businesses, big and small, are powered by Wordpress and many web development agencies actually specialize in them so for me, in my opinion, the more frameworks I am familiar with, the better for my chances at getting a job.

As for the niche, that’s what I’m torn with. On one hand, after finishing all certifications on FCC, I feel more confident that I can do jobs that a lot of major companies look for like React, NodeJS, ExpressJS projects and I like them. On the other, I like doing Wordpress as well for the reasons above.

My website is a way for me to showcase my skills as you can find on the my project list here: https://www.midnitedev.com/projects/

However, since it’s a CMS with all the bells and whistles, I figured, why keep it at that? You can start a blog about your interests, create an online store, etc. You don’t have to limit your site’s content to just about your skills in a certain area.

I think people, companies are attracted to creativity and if you have something worthwhile to share, whatever it is, if it helps gain an audience then you go for it. You might find a manager at a large game company contacting you at some point about a job because he/she found an interesting post after browsing through your site and learned you’re also a developer whose skills is in demand with an opening they have at the moment. That’s a possibility.

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@rabi-999

Thank you! I am currently looking into the chrome audits like you mentioned and maybe I can find some way to optimize some things there. I appreciate the help. I cut down on some issues I found on GTMetrix.com, pingdom, PageSpeed Insights and webpagetest.org but the one thing I cannot seem to change no matter how much I try to optimize the site (homepage for now) is the Time-To-First-Byte (TTFB).

A consistent suggestion most guides offer in case of slow TTFB is to change the hosting provider for your site. I suspect that this is the cause of my issues because I’ve already solved problems that the other web tools have looked into. Since this hosting provider’s services align with my current budget, I will have to find a way to avoid drastic measures :smile:. will test my other pages as well and see if there are any changes which I can take not of.

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It doesn’t even say your name on the home page?

I have to scroll half way down the page before I find out what it is you do.

There’s no contact option… I click on the “Help and Contact Info” and it just scrolls me to the top of the page.

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@n8udd Thanks for checking out my site. There is actually the contact link (icon with the phone) on the header to the left which directs you to the page where you can contact me. In that page, you can send me an email, or contact me on any of those social media links. and thanks for pointing out that blank link on the footer section, I need to update that.

As for not putting on my name on the homepage, I have decided to put the brand of the business instead of my name for the reason that I just really like that logo on there :smiley:. In seriousness though, I guess that I did it because I prefer that the people contact me to learn more about me and what I do after direct communication (like through email). I consider it as something of an interest generator to have some semblance of mystery regarding the site creator. I know it’s corny but I hope it works.

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looks very nice, but for me transitions are to slow… like 2s?