Not Once, but Twice for the Tribute Page

Hello, everyone! :blush: Eunkyung here.

I’m so excited to announce that I’ve just finished my Tribute Page for the second time. I know it’s not something big, but hey, small wins make up great victories. I’m just happy with how I somehow improved the page after about 40hrs of studying CSS (tracked w/a Pomodoro app). My learning references were ShayHowe, Frontend Masters (6months free w/ GitHub student developer pack), and of course, FreeCodeCamp.

I last made my first one on July 5. My learning references back then were a course in Coursera (outdated one, but the first place I fell in love in coding :heart:) and FreeCodeCamp. I stopped coding for 2months bc I lost motivation. Classes started, and I want to drop out of Uni bc my BS Computer Science course just doesn’t align with my career path choice, Frontend Developer & Graphic Designer/Artist). The issue is I know my parents would be against it :worried: However, I realized that this is my life and I know that self-learning is a better way to achieve my career goals than spending 3 years more in a Uni that teaches old and irrelevant courses. Thank you, Google, and of course, to all of the free learning platforms!

Anyway, enough of this drama :laughing: This month of October I started reviewing and learning web development again (got intimidated & stuck w/flexbox :woozy_face:). There were many things I realized after completing the challenge for the second time, and I just feel to share them with you all, bc these might be helpful in some ways for you and me :wink: :grinning:

Realizations about my first try:

  • Before, I didn’t know much about what I was doing because I try to learn and get things done FAST. Like I want to master CSS in a few days or so (feeling gifted much :sweat_smile:) bc I just badly need a job to prove something to my parents and other pressuring personal reasons :grimacing: I think I was just trying to copy the styles of the example, and I didn’t understand much. So I guess it’s better to learn slowly to understand more of what you’re doing :sweat_smile: Before trying out complicated codes, I take notes first, and this classic technique helps me learn better.
  • Even though I learned from Coursera that design comes first before coding, I still went on working them at the same time on the spot. What a big mistake. I did it bc I got all too excited :rofl: So, it made coding for the first tribute page frustrating and harder.

Realizations about my second try:

  • My workflow was still chaotic. I got mentally blocked because all of the learnings just jumbled in my head, so the procedure or steps to do the challenge was vague.
  • I think I did the same mistake twice :rofl: (kind of) I didn’t make a full design of my tribute page. But at this time, I made a rough layout and chose color palettes for the background & fonts. Unlike before, it has become less frustrating in coding. Much improvement is still needed on the preparation of the design though. Like choosing first some fonts to use which I totally forgot to prepare :joy:
  • I know that there are a lot of flaws in the look and the code. I know there are mistakes, and I feel like I want to correct them now, but I can’t anymore bc I still don’t know them :rofl: But, I guess time with the effort of learning will tell me someday. So I guess, in the meantime, it’s better to leave the project that way and call it “complete” and recognize it as a small achievement.

That’s it for my realizations on creating the tribute Page at the FreeCodeCamp. Please feel free to add some comments if you have other insights or perspectives of my realizations. Also, I’d very much appreciate any feedback on my project. They’d be really helpful.

Thank you so much for reading! This is my first post here in the forum, and I like to create more in the future after completing some projects. I just think that they’re like journal entries for my Web Development Journey, and I decide to share them with ya’ll so I could help, not only myself but also to those who need these to relate with or just anything. Looking forward to talk with ya’ll :blush:

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Nice to read this. I recognize a lot of what you said there. I also took a small break a while ago of a couple of weeks. Busy with other stuff but mostly because I got a bit demotivated. But after some time getting on a level where I understood more than 5% of what I was doing, it started to get really fun. It was a decisive turning point, from just copying stuff to less or no need for looking what code to write. I think it happened when I busy making a second product page. Now i’m also revisiting all my former projects, applying more recently gained knowledge and learning more additional design tricks.
Also this forum is great and it helps me a lot reading on peoples projects and feedbacks.

On your tribute page:
I think it looks nice. I like the coloring, the emphasized border and headers you added.
And you’ve some social media buttons with hover effects and returned to the color theme you started on top. looks good, more “dressed up” compared to the former version.

Something that for my taste would make viewing the page more comfortable is:

  • Putting the content in a container/wrapper with some max-width. Now there is content all the way to the left, on a big screen it is a bit too far stretched.
    You could align the content with a certain width and it would look more symmetric and organized. Especially the youtube video.

Maybe it is obvious, but something you ve got to experience, is the need for loads of practice and not too much expectations (not going too fast). I speak for myself here, but I realized that even though CSS is one of the many languages - it deserves a decent amount of attention. More than I used to give it.

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Hey Eunkyung. Your tribute page looks great! It really shows how much effort you put into it so congratz on this step of your coding journey :slight_smile: .

I can relate with what you said, I took around a year break from coding after going through the Responsive Web Design course here and came back to realize I had no clue what I was doing still and redoing everything haha.

I feel like once you start to get the hang of things, other things you learn will start to click with things you’ve seen in the past. Well that’s just me though.

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Yep, totally not understanding enough of what things are happening makes developing websites frustrating, boring, demotivating :sleepy: But when learned things start clicking, it begins to feel like they all want to be applied or put into action. On the second time of trying 'em, the process kinda tries to stick and retain in the mind, like tattooing themselves on my brain’s skin :laughing: I then get the pro feeling for a short time after coding w/out looking or copying much from other samples :sunglasses::joy:

I agree that ffc forum is helpful. Stories from other people & replies like yours are like gems. Made me feel like I’m not alone in this forever learning journey :heart:

Thank you so much for your positive and constructive feedbacks! Also thought that they’re far streched when viewed in a pc :laughing: but I got lazy to fix it (seems ok in mobile so meh​:joy:) I’ll try to apply them as soon as I can. Really grateful to you @code-carrot :heart:

Let’s be turtle-like-studying-students , and feel great of small & big winnings in a forever learning marathon :laughing: (too much analogy sorry HAHA) Basically, ‘slowly but surely’ learning style get things done better. Feel like it’s a long endless marathon than a race to finish :smiley: kinda applies to life in general too (omg the wisdom from random quotes generator HAHA) Hope to hear from you again! :heart:

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Aww thank you so much, @dcao! Congratulations to you too for getting to the point where you are now and deciding to continue learning again :heart: Totally appreciate your comment, feels good to know that someone else liked my design pft :relaxed:

I relate with what you’ve said of getting the hanging of things starts to a more understanding of those things. The key might be really is to just go “slowly but surely” to not miss out much and understand better. Definitely want to hear from you again! :heart:

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