Below is a ‘plastic’ version of me that I am going to experiment with to see if it looks effective with the packaging.

The first of my target audiences are academic staff, who may visit my portfolio to sample the standard of work being turned out and to understand what the course involves. I believe this audience therefore requires the site to be well organised, with clear navigation and titles etc. Content required, aside from the visuals of work, will be descriptions of skills used or learnt in each piece of work and also a link or feed to my learning journal. This is so they can easily identify what work was involved in specific modules and so they can get an insight into my learning experience on the course.

My next audience are peers or family, who may visit my portfolio to see what kind of work I do, take inspiration or to contact me. I believe this audience therefore requires the site design to be a reflection of my personality, and to be interesting. My family or peers may not have any interest at all in web design therefore it needs to draw and maintain their attention; otherwise they will exit the site. Content required, aside from clear visuals of work, will be a range of contact links such as social media and email details. A bookmark feature might also be useful for those users who are searching for ideas or inspiration.

Finally, I believe the most important target audience are potential employers, who may visit the site when I apply for a web design job role. I believe this audience therefore requires the site to clearly display my work in categories based on the type of work. Content required, aside from detailed visuals of my work, will be a description for each piece detailing the skills used and the original design brief given. A link to the ‘live’ version of the work is needed and a full list of skills and qualifications that I have would also be of interest.

Listed below are the goals for my portfolio website;

• To present my best work in the best possible light, to make it look impressive.
• To list my web design and development skills with evidence of them in practice.
• Provide an easy means of contact with myself through a wide range of methods.
• Create some interest/hits/return visits with regularly updated content, such as a blog.

Word Count 489

I can personally see the progress that I have made with PHP, mainly due to my confidence. Now If I was asked to produce another PHP site, there wouldn’t be the fear or trepidation apparent as before.

The learning resources that I used were probably overall not as useful as expected. Firstly the book was effective at taking me right from the beginning, up to having an understanding of what PHP is and what is involved in scripting it. However I found that doing the tutorial was not really working, as my specific project was always in the back of my mind and it was difficult to relate things covered in the tutorial to my project.

The W3C schools tutorials were generic and did not involve any scenarios, so it was easier to relate to my project. But still the problem I was having, was knowing actually what I needed for my site, with my needs being very specialised and specific.

I quickly realised that I needed to start looking on the internet for tutorials that could produce what I wanted or something similar. I found this to be the time when I progressed the most. Although the online tutorials proved to be most effective resource at helping me with my project, I do not believe that I would have been able to produce what I have without the other resources. They provided me with the background knowledge and a constant reference while I was building up the different features of the site.

Analysing my ability in relation to the industry, I probably have some way to go. If a job role required me to be able to contently code PHP efficiently and quickly, I would not be able to do that. On the other hand I understand some job roles to only require an understanding of PHP and be able to implement it. With a little bit more experience, having gained a better understanding of what PHP is needed to create specific features of a website, I believe I could meet this job requirement. The problem I think is that with PHP there are so many different ways to do everything, so it’s hard to know what’s the best ways to do specific things. This is something that only gaining more experience using PHP will bring.

Finally, taking into consideration the time that I have spent, I am proud of what I have achieved. Coming from a recent educational background where you are basically spoon-fed through the course, self learning was always going to be something I would find difficult. Not taking this into consideration, I would have been happy with my progress, so I am defiantly pleased with my progress.

This section of learning has also brought me closer to understanding my specific needs for the end project. Setting up the tables for the MySql Database was helpful in that it reinforced previous learning but, with the subject being more relevant that the book tutorial, it was easier to relate to and take in.

I spent time looking at what PHP I am going to need to make the site do what the Creative Brief says it should. The simplest feature will be using Includes to show the header and footer on every page. Another feature that I am going to include is rotating content on the home page, to display a varying image on the home page.  This should be fairly simple and will include setting the images as numbered variables and then selecting a random number to Include. Next the contact form will require PHP to gather inputted information from a form and send it to an email address. This should hopefully be quite straight forward with having some previous experience with this. Finally the most difficult feature will be linking to a MySql Database and being able to display, add, delete or modify rows. This will involve various pages of PHP which all link to the tables that I have just created.

I can now see that I have an understanding off all of the aspects of PHP that I require, however the hard part will be putting all of these pieces together so that all features work alongside one another. I think the book has now taken me as far as it can, it can still be used as a reference, but I need to start looking at PHP specific to my needs.

With two weeks to code the site, I believe I have adequate time based on the speed of my progress so far. Although I still cannot imagine me having a fully working and validating site at the end of those two weeks! I will have to get the XHTML and CSS out of the way and hope I can complete the PHP using my book as a reference or online tutorials, should I require any help.

Targets for next two weeks;

• Complete XHTML and CSS coding for site.
• Complete PHP scripting.

This section of learning saw me meet my target and cover the next 5 chapters and get upto the point of just starting to create a Content Management System. I seem to have come a long way in only two weeks and If someone had of said I would have been about to create a Content Management System this time two weeks ago, I wouldn’t have believed them. However as mentioned before, I am not confident of the quality I have learned the chapters and I think I would still need to refer back to the book a lot. I am going to revisit these chapters to try and take them in better.

In a brief summary of my learning, I covered the rest of the PHP chapter which introduced me to conditional code. I covered more on MySQL and learnt how to publish and link the databases online. I finally learnt how to structure a PHP page and where to include any HTML, so I could now create a working web page made up of PHP and HTML.

Targets next two weeks;

• Complete next three chapters and use W3C Schools to reinforce this sections’ learning.
• Create tables for The Fiction Section website.
• Start to list the PHP functions that will be required and research examples.

My first task was to set up the testing local server. This again gave me no confidence that I was going to be successful with PHP. I am normally very good with configuring new software, however I had difficulties seeing the confirmation that the server was ready to use. After a few re-installs and too many laptop restarts to count, I got the server working. This was just an insight into how technical and complicated PHP is.

Continuing to work through the pages, I was starting to feel less alienated by the language and terms used. Straight away there was the opportunity to create my first PHP script. It was probably the most basic PHP possible and was just fetching the server time, however it was a mini achievement for me and was almost a confidence boost or maybe just relief that it worked.
The next chapter covered tables and MySQL. I had already covered databases going back to high school so this chapter wasn’t as hard to grasp as the previous one. I recognised many of the database terms and this took the ‘fear’ out of my learning. I went through creating tables and adding rows of data. I took this opportunity to visit PHP Admin on my hosting account. Seeing tables in this way helped be grasp creating them with code.

I finally went onto cover ‘variables’ which then went onto ‘arrays’. I found the concept hard to grasp at first, but once I got my head into gear I started to follow it. The PHP reminded me of algebra from Maths at school. It was always something I enjoyed and was successful at. Whether I am as successful with PHP, remains to be seen!

Targets for next two weeks;

• Cover next 5 chapters in the Sitepoint book.

• Visit W3C schools and make a start to the PHP tutorials.

• Start Designing The Fiction Section site.

I have come into contact with PHP previously, while creating a form for my previous websites. However this contact is only really based around implementing a script rather than actually writing the code.

I therefore would be able to identify PHP script against other pages of code, however I wouldn’t know where to start, writing any. My initial research has given me a basic understanding of the most common uses of PHP in the industry and I have been introduced to some PHP terms, however again my understanding is no more than superficial.

A quick and easy was to test my knowledge is the take the W3C Schools PHP Quiz [1]. I managed to score 30% in a time of 4:33min. This is a good starting point to measure my learning progress from. I believe my correct answers were due to a few factors. Firstly, my initial research gave me the ability to be able to pick valid functions out from a list. This shows knowledge of the terms of PHP but this is not as important as the coding knowledge. Next, I was able to apply my HTML and CSS coding knowledge to the quiz to validate lines of script and pick out the correct one. This again will stand me in good stead but does not really say much for my knowledge of PHP. Finally some of the answers were just simply educated guesses. I was able to use common sense to eliminate options until I was left with an answer.

I have now set the measuring post. I have a very limited knowledge of PHP and therefore I am going to be learning a lot in the first few weeks especially. This will be a lot to take in, but I will hopefully be able to make lots of progress very quickly. This is likely to slow down after I have learnt all of the basics.

In my fortnightly blogs I will be able to list the knowledge or new skills that I have learnt, such as the functions I have come across etc. At the end of the learning programme I will evaluate my progress, by listing my strengths and weaknesses. I will also be able to compare my knowledge of PHP to the popular functions highlighted by my research, to see If I am able to meet the requirements of the current industry.

1. http://www.w3schools.com/php/php_quiz.asp

I believe it will be useful to conduct some research into what PHP can actually do, and look into its most common uses in the industry.

I have chosen two angles of research. The first is secondary research, by reading web design websites and forums to see what designers all over the world use PHP for. The other angle is to conduct primary research using Twitter to ask my contacts about their uses of PHP. This will hopefully provide me with more specific and relevant information with the contacts being local and having gone down the same training routes as me. These two angles should give me an overall understanding of how I can use PHP and highlight any particular strengths or weaknesses.

My primary research saw me receive two replies from web designers currently working in the industry. When asked for their three most common uses for PHP, both highlighted the use of the PHP ‘Include’ function. This is useful for including common sets of code on numerous pages, but only having to write the code once. I can see that this would save time when coding web pages.

Another function that both designers said was one of their most common uses of PHP was ‘Variables’. From what I understand this allows certain content on a web page to vary every time it is visited. This could be useful for content such as advertising.

I was also informed that PHP is heavily involved with CMS. Having knowledge of PHP could enable me to either create my own CMS, or at least make tweaks to suit my needs to software such as WordPress.

Finally the use of PHP in forms was mentioned. I have come across PHP forms previously. I understand that PHP could allow information entered into a form to be stored in a database or emailed to an address.

Moving onto my secondary research, reading an article gave me some more common uses of PHP. PHP is required to for shopping carts[2], to link it to a database and display the live availability of products.

The article also picked forums out as being very dependent on PHP, and the PM system linked to forums. [3]This will again be so that all posts can be kept in a database and retrieved when needed.

Other uses of PHP are in photo galleries and site counters.[4]

All of the functions seem to be based around retrieving stored information from a database, so in essence I guess this is what PHP is. I can see that it will add lots to my website, increasing functionality and the ease of managing content. From the basics of Includes that will decrease the  about of code I have to enter for every page, all the way up to having a content managed shopping cart on my website. PHP is going to be a very useful skill to have for my work

1.       http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PHP

2.       http://ezinearticles.com/?Top-Ten-PHP-Uses&id=2918388

3.       http://ezinearticles.com/?Top-Ten-PHP-Uses&id=2918388

4.       http://www.ozzu.com/programming-forum/php-uses-website-design-t20240.html

Before I can create my Learning Contract, I obviously have to decide what skill area of the Industry I am going to concentrate on. With the end goal of the course being to meet all of the requirements of employers in the current Web Design Industry, these companies are the best sources to look at when deciding this.

After looking at a typical live job advert ^[1] on the Internet, there are some skills that pop up over and over again. Skillset also give a list of skills needed for Interactive Media, and their  IM7 ^[2] unit is of particular interest, giving the list of coding skills needed.   Some of the skills we have a good understanding of already, such as being able to hand-code XHTML and CSS, and it’s encouraging to see this as it shows we are learning the most important skills needed. However it’s the skills listed that I don’t know much about that I will be concentrating on for my Learning Contract.

JavaScript is the scripting language using on the Web. It’s used in millions of pages and would allow me to add functionality to my pages, for example validating forms and detecting a user’s browser, thus allowing me to create more exciting and reliable websites. ^[3]

Flash is a tool to create animated websites. It allows you to add almost any effect you want to a website. ^[4] However it doesn’t just stop at websites, you can also create Flash animated CD’s and videos. This may be useful if a company came for a branding solution, allowing me to offer them a full range of promotional products.

PHP is a tool for making dynamic and interactive websites.  It will allow me to create my own web standards compliant search boxes, forms etc. ^[5] This was one of the main difficulties that I have come across in my previous work, not being able to find suitable scripts, but this would solve that problem. PHP is also the basis of WordPress, which we are going to be learning about in the near future, so any knowledge would benefit me for then.

Whichever new skill I choose to learn, the learning plan will have to suit my learning style. I am now familiar with learning styles from last year, but I will complete further surveys and tests to ensure that my style has not changed over time.

I have chosen to learn basic PHP. This is in view of the upcoming CMS (WordPress) module, and also so I can hopefully create a set of scripts that can be used in my future websites. It was a tight call between this and JavaScript, but I see JavaScript as something that would naturally come after PHP, to validate forms etc. Flash may also be something for the future, but this type of site tends to be for the huge International brands, and realistically I’m not going to be required to do any work for them in the near future.

Word Count- 502

Resources for JavaScript

JavaScript: The Definitive Guide

The Book of JavaScript, 2nd Edition: A Practical Guide to Interactive Web Pages

W3Schools.com- JavaScript

Resources for Flash

Foundation Flash CS4 for Designers

Flash CS4 for Dummies

W3Schools.com- Flash

Resources for PHP

Build Your Own Database Driven Web Site Using PHP & MySQL

PHP and MySQL Web Development

W3Schools.com- PHP

1. http://jobview.monster.co.uk/Web-Developer-Job-Manchester-North-West-UK-85840787.aspx, [22/09/10]

2. http://skillset.org/uploads/pdf/asset_6567.pdf?2, [22/09/10]

3. http://www.w3schools.com/js, [22/09/10]

4. http://www.w3schools.com/flash, [22/09/10]

5. http://www.w3schools.com/php, [22/09/10]