Websites from Scratch
During the time that I have studied at the University of Minnesota - Twin Cities (UMN), I have practiced and taken two web design classes as part of my plan to work in web development. I have had some prior knowledge of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
The first website that I recreated was Al’s Breakfast, which is near UMN’s campus. The original website was not visually pleasing, and the navigation bars were confusing for users. Since this was the first site that I designed, there is still room for improvement. However, I quickly picked up HTML, CSS, and JavaScript along the way. The main things that I have learned are to use the API requests to send and receive JSON files to get the food menu that customers want to find, as well as Instagram feeds when users use the hashtag #AlsBreakfast. One feature that is very useful is the merchandise section, where you can select a variety of Al’s merchandise.
The second website that I recreated is Soles4Souls. This is a nonprofit organization that organizes people throughout the United States and the world to donate their gently worn shoes. The mission is to collect shoes that can be refurbished into newer pairs of shoes to give to people in developing countries who are in need. I mainly used JQuery, Parallax Effect (JS library), and JavaScript. From this project, I learned how to create user-friendly layouts with appealing designs from friends as well as teachers’ feedback.
My third website is my (outdated) personal portfolio, portfolio.wileybui.com, where I have published most of my projects online along with my personal statement. Through the development of this website, I learned how to register and host websites online along with subdomains on my own. It was challenging at first, but I utilized YouTube and other online resources to obtain the knowledge and skills I needed so that I could finalize the project.
Lastly, I work at JB Auto Body Repair & Towing near my house in Burnsville, MN. I have had the opportunity to create several new projects for their company, including logo design, web design, and publishing to the web with their own domain. It was fun because I have experienced all of these processes before. What I have learned is that there are many online resources that are free for anyone to use, but often people are not aware of them. Creating new projects for fun and learning new processes along the way definitely motivates me to become a better independent programmer.
