I did a little bit of work on the site last night, and though it makes for a small change, I’m pretty proud of my work. All of the comics, blog posts and other pages around the site have a new set of buttons for sharing, so things are easy to share on facebook, twitter, google +, tumblr, pinterest, and more. This is an upgrade from the facebook “like” button that previously appeared on some but not all of my pages.
WordPress is pretty easy to operate, and there are lots of plugins (like the one I’m using) that help you customize things and make life easier. But even with all the user friendly menus, I find it immensely useful to have had a course on web design a few years ago. It means I can find my way around html pretty easily and muddle through css when necessary. I might have been able to build this site without that instruction, but it would have been more painful and I would have had less control. Even with that training, there are things that are difficult and frustrating, and some things I would love to change but which are the right combination of difficult and unimportant to be ignored for the time being.
When I took the class, it was overwhelming and extremely stressful. I was a senior in high school, and because I’d run out of English classes to take at the high school I was spending the second half of my day at the college. That last semester I was taking English Composition 2, Intro to Philosophy and Intro to Web Development.
Walking into Web Development, I realized I was badly outnumbered. I was one of two high school students in the class, and the only girl. Most of my classmates were a solid foot taller than I was and probably several years older. The teacher confessed that she was hesitant about having high school students in her college class. I had no prior knowledge to fall back on, and it seemed like everyone else knew what they were doing. Working on the first homework assignment, I cried.
But it got better. I became resolute about standing up for both minorities groups I represented and proving myself capable. I got my dad (who worked at the university and had keys to that building) to let me into the lab after hours and on Sundays so that I could finish assignments and put extra work in. I worked harder in that class than I had in any class previously (school was mostly pretty easy for me). And I came out of it with an A and a website which is gone now but which gave me the confidence I needed to build this website, three years later.
I’m glad I don’t have to write it all myself. I did that in the class, and while it was a good skill to build, I’d rather work with wordpress any day of the week. I don’t remember everything we did, or how it all worked, but it served as a basis for teaching myself to use the tools I use today.
Which is a long way of saying that every time I delve into the coded guts of my website and come out with things running better than they did before, it gives me a burst of pride. It is immensely satisfying to be able to make changes and solve problems around the site, and to see things fall into place. I think if I get a chance, I’ll take the time to do another class or two and build on this skill set. I built the site out of a need for an online home for my work. In the process, it’s becoming part of my work and I’m proud to be the handyman in my online home.