NMIX 4010: Web Development
Project Three: WordPress Variety Pack — News
Athens Business & Consumer News: What’s going on in Athens, GA?
March 2023
Project Overview
This project was my first stab at WordPress. My goals were to learn: basic functions of WordPress, how to integrate a theme, plugins and custom CSS. I accomplished these goals with tools including Google Fonts, the Jetpack plugin, the “Republic News” theme and its widgets.
Challenges
- In this project, I struggled with menus and the customization of the home page. It took me a while to understand that I choose a theme with limited homepage customization via widgets.
- Custom CSS was also a learning curve; it did not apply with the ease it does in html.
- I was also challenged by the capabilities of Jetpack — sticking to a basic email list that was difficult to create.
Solutions
To solve the first problem (homepage customization), I figured out that all I needed to do was switch the homepage to a static page in WP reading settings. This taught me that it’s important to be meticulous when setting up a new WordPress install. This process also taught me that theme selection is crucial in terms of widget options and customization potential.
To solve the custom CSS problem, I only figured out how to integrate Google Fonts. This alone was hard enough, as it was a struggle to get the code to translate to WP. However, the solution was just tinkering around with the code. This taught me that most problems in WP (and web dev in general) can be solved by playing and exploring!
Lastly, I solved the Jetpack problem by creating an email list. While I was hoping to integrate more plugins, I am happy with my newsletter signup. It took a lot of personal customization along with the original widget settings. This taught me to take widgets and other included aspects with a grain of salt; it’s okay to tweak elements to meet my needs.
Results
I am super proud of my finished product. I’m proud of the way I was easily able to integrate AI (DALL-E & Chat GPT) into my news site for content creation. I am also proud of my differing media, block types, email newsletter signup, menu, posts & pages, logo & headers, and widget customization on news.
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Going forward, I’m excited to learn how to better integrate custom CSS into WordPress. I am also eager to use more plugins and different themes.
