1. Client and Topic
I will be creating a personal portfolio that will highlight all the web design projects I have completed, including websites, coding, and graphics. I will also make sure there is room to link any new projects I complete as they are completed.
2. Development Process and Engagement
Since I am creating a website for myself, I will have to research the best way to make an engaging portfolio. This research may include looking at other online examples, research on what employers look for in a portfolio, and asking others in my career field what type of content they had in their portfolios and/or would recommend including.
3. Testing
I will be tasking my husband to break the website. He has a lot of experience with coding and will be able to better parse the technical bits. I will then send the website to various friends and family to get non-technical advice. I have experiences from the youth, to artists, to non-technical folk to ensure the website looks professional and is functional for all types of people. I will be including chrome, Firefox and potentially edge in the testing. I will also attempt to make the website accessible on a mobile device….eventually.
4. Description
The business is my own personal portfolio. This will mostly include projects from my time at UMGC and potentially help I have given to friends and family for their websites. The purpose will be to showcase my skills in the field of web design and give me a platform to constantly update and improve the more I learn about web design and programming. The intended audience will be potential employers. I will make sure to create a website that clearly highlights my technical expertise and skills that are valuable to recruiters and companies. These recruiters and hiring managers will likely be in their mid-career stage, so I need to make sure my website looks professional and does not include too much niche references or dumb humor. Ideally, this website would be included in any web design job applications I may send out. The website will include links/screenshots of any websites I have built or helped build. Examples of my code, and links to any graphics/photography I find to be a good example of my skills. All of this will be accompanied by accurate descriptions to ensure there is little confusion to what I can provide to employers. This website will be updated as I learn new skills to make the core website more functional/ beautiful. Additionally, as I expand my skills in other areas (photography, Adobe Photoshop/Illustrator), I will make sure to have the best examples front and center on the portfolio.
5. Growth and Maintenance
As mentioned above, the website will evolve to best showcase my skills. As my skills improve, the website will be updated to showcase those new skills. Eventually, I think switching from only self-built websites and coding to including modern website building software like Wordpress is a good idea as many employers chose to use these over straight code. Additionally, I will make sure I have good coding practices like commenting code, adding TODO lines, using clear variable names, etc. These tasks will mostly be on an as needed basis when I learn new skills but testing the website for any problems that may occur with coding language updates and browser updates should happen approximately monthly.
6. Organization
The website will start with a home page. This home page will have a welcome message with a professional photo and a few buzzwords. The main point of this page will be to quickly encourage viewers to navigate to more detailed pages. The four pages it will link to is the about page, the portfolio, the qualifications, and services/ products. Within the portfolio there will be 3 separate pages, one for artistic examples which will include photography and Adobe InDesign and Photoshop examples, coding examples, and website examples. The qualifications page will explain succinctly why I am a valuable candidate, and we'll link to a copy of my complete resume and detailed work history and the services slash products page will detail what I can provide as a independent contractor and link to a contact form.
7. Security
The website will not include any sort of e-commerce and it is simply a portfolio. The content will not be password protected as I want it to be accessible to all potential employers easily. The website will not contain any PII or sensitive information that isn’t already publicly available (ie. phone numbers and company names.) There will be no account creation on my website, but I will have a project one day that includes that eventually. I will use code obfuscation within my code, but as there is very little that will need to be secure, there isn’t much I could do that the web host will not already be doing for me.
8. Web Hosting
When choosing a webhost site, I will not need anything that would use a large amount of bandwidth as I expect only a few people to be accessing the website. The traffic will not be high so I will choose something that is cheap if not free period since there will be no sensitive information on this website, I do not need to look for something that includes high levels of security, however since there will be a contact form it must have some level of security so anyone who wants to contact me won't have their personal contact information that I collect leaked onto the ether. The most important things to me are that it effectively hosts my simple website and is economic as it is just a personal portfolio ideally choosing something that is free. The website will need to support mostly just the basic programming languages like HTML CSS and JavaScript. I cannot imagine there is a web hosting provider that does not support this. Eventually I may switch to a content management system if I want to build a website more easily and more effectively without coding every line. I would keep the domain name very simple and just use my first and last name as they are unique enough.
leeanacrispell.com
9. Marketing
The website won't be marketed on a large scale as it will mostly be used to show examples of my work and skills to employers. The most important parts will be making sure the website is easy to find without a direct link (using an easy to remember website name) and ensuring it populates when my name is searched in a search engine. That way, any employer that wants to know about me will always be shown my best work first and foremost.