Evaluating the Interactive Media Product and Self Managed Learning Plan

Evaluation of my Interactive Media Product - http://www.weekendwanderers.org.uk/

Despite my initial disappointment that I chose an easy PHP code to integrate into a website, it to be proved the right decision. The whole month has been more hectic than usual. Working full time as a design manager and being a father of two children, managing my time and prioritising commitments is an everyday task that I am quite adapt at handling however, this month has been even more demanding because the lady who looks after my children for the days I am at work has been in and out of hospital for the past month.

Overall, I am proud of the website I have created because I have done everything, created the logo, organised the content, approved the design, arranged the hosting/domain name and even took the photographs that appear in the slideshow. (D3)

Reading back through my weekly post, I feel disappointed that I allowed myself to get stressed for hours before finally residing to the fact I needed help therefore I posted my problem on a forum. If I were to do this project again, I would work up several more sketches before creating the final screen design and post any technical problems on forums before I get too frustrated. (D1)

Evaluate use of SMLP

Prior to starting the Self Managed Learning Plan, I was apprehensive, not about managing my time effectively, I certainly don’t have a problem there. I was in a quandary, I understood that learning Hypertext Pre-processor (PHP) was the next obvious step, learning it might enhanced my skills while using html and may allow me to develop dynamic webpages I thought however, due to processing no background knowledge how could I determine what to learn?, or what knowledge would be useful in a real world situation?. Realisation of this dilemma allowed me to build research time into the plan. Investigating the impact of PHP in the design industry gave me an understanding about the common uses of PHP and how it works in websites.

In order to develop the skills required for creating the website that utilised PHP, I compiled a list of ten resources. While I was waiting for the books I had purchased to arrive from Amazon, I watched several PHP online tutorials on Killerphp.com these gave me a basic understanding of how PHP could be used to create dynamic websites. Documenting my learning in my sketchbook allowed me to annotate my findings into a language I could understand.

After several failed attempts, I eventually created a PHP environment with local host testing server that worked. Following this initial setup, I mixed PHP with HTML to create a simple feedback form and practiced all the basics from Variables, If Else statements to Indexed and Associative Arrays. Although I found my annotations useful, I decided to create a series of short videos to liven up my learning experience. (Steve: please see video's on CD for assessment)

While I feel happy that I have created a PHP feedback form that works effectively, I wish I had more courage to commit myself to something more challenging using PHP. It is my intention to develop the site I have created further to include a photography gallery that will allow certain users the ability to upload photographs with comments to an online gallery.

Adhering to a well-structured learning plan helped me focus on my learning objectives however, several times I found myself distracted by constantly tweaking the final design or learning other PHP functions I might integrate into the website at a later date.

Week 5 - 4th-10th March

Adding final touches to Interactive Media Product

6^th March
Adding Validation logos

10^th March
Writing up draft SMLP experiences

Week 4 - 25th Feb - 3rd March

Validating the Interactive Media Product

Unfortunately, I had a set back due to my own stupidity this week. While developing the web layouts in Photoshop before transferring images into Dreamweaver, I flattened the psd. Thankfully this gave me an opportunity to improve some aspects of the design I previously overlooked.

With a completed design working in the latest and Firefox browsers across Mac and PC, I looked into improving Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). After reading several journals and tips about SEO, I found out that by validating your website would go towards improving the ranking.

In order to test the site, I uploaded the HTML to http://validator.w3.org/ I found several minor problems that needed fixing before it would validate. In no time at all I validated the HTML strict 1.0 and CSS2.1.

25^th Feb
Problem with images and foolishly flattened the original artwork my mistake

26^th Feb
Looking at tips to improve SEO
One tip was to validate the website

27^th Feb
Website Development

28^th Feb
Validating problems fixed

Week 3 - 18-25th Feb

Evaluating ideas and creating a simple interactive media product that utilises PHP5

This week was all about reflecting on design and realising I could do a better job. I looked into many ways of integrating a PHP slideshow that used arrays to rotate a new image every time the site was visited however, after showing this to my parents they explained they would prefer it to display images as a slideshow like their LCD frame.

Unfortunately trying to use arrays without an automatic refresh of the page seemed impossible with my limited knowledge of PHP. This would have been a problem, but because I have a feedback form on the same page, every time someone would start to complete it the page would refresh and everything they imputed would disappear. To solve the issue, I felt it necessary to use JavaScript but then couldn’t adjust the positioning of the images. Thankfully after posting my problems on a forum a nice chap from the Netherlands assisted me and all my problems were solved, I just wished I had visited a forum earlier than I would not have been frustrated for several hours. (M3) (Steve: see actual printouts in sketchbook)

Despite my initial design being a success, I felt it was too dark and only when my parents saw the new curved design did they agree. Although I was happy with the design, I still felt it could be improved. With a name that suggests people wandering aimlessly about the countryside what better image than to use footprints walking in many directions as a background. Excited at the prospect of designing a better looking website, I altered the logo back to the original footprint idea, as I felt it had a better relationship with the background. (D3)

18^th Feb
Investigated ways of uploading images and saving them as a gallery, looked on zigzag

20^th Feb

• Designing Website – Initial sketches in sketch book

• Reflecting on Designs

21^st Feb

• Actual feedback and development of rollovers
• Developing the website

22^nd Feb
Problem with PHP Slideshow

23^rd Feb

• Defining the structure of the website
• Plan of action
• Re-designing the website

24^th Feb
Resolving the problem with the PHP slideshow

Week 2 - 11-18th Feb

Planning and designing a simple interactive media product that utilises PHP5

After creating a learning plan and technical specification for the Interactive Media project, I was now ready to start planning and design.

For weeks now, I have been milling over ideas for a logo for Weekend Wanderers. Do I use the tread as two W’s or the W’s as the hills and paths?. I decided to work up both ideas into vector and then into screen designs. I finally chose the two W’s idea of hills and paths because I felt that it might work better across different formats.

With a name already for the walking club established many years ago, I now had to see if it was available as a Domain. Following my investigations using WHOIS I found www.weekendwanderers.org.uk was available but www.weekendwanderers.co.uk wasn’t. Picking a host to upload the website might have been easy, if I didn’t have to consider MySQL and PHP, this meant that the hosting would cost more money.

After confirming the domain name with my parents we discussed the website in more detail especially how they would receive enquires from potential new walkers. The outcome of this discussion meant that they felt they wouldn’t have enough content for a page every month and would prefer just one page detailing the annual walking programme. They felt the contact form should appear on every page but would prefer to make space for a gallery page and have the contact form as a link. Although I didn’t want to discourage my parent’s suggestion of a photography gallery this was something I could add later, but felt having the contact page on some pages as a link was a great idea.

12^th Feb
Following youtube tutorials

17^th February

• Tried MAMP didn’t work - Xampp worked
• Developed the logo design today in vectors

• Creating website screen designs

Innovation and create thought have been applied (D3)
Logo development, colour layout and typeface choice

Reflect on on-line Videos and tutorials (M2) (D2)
Setting up PHP on my Computer

Identify a simple PHP function
why the form function will be useful

Plan how to integrate a basic function PHP into an interactive media project
explain about hosting requirement

Week 1 - 27th Jan - 11th Feb

Developing the skills required for creating an interactive media product that contains PHP5 (M2) (D2)

This week, I introduced myself to PHP and wish I had picked flash as my self managed learning task instead. Little did I realise that before I could start creating PHP, I would need to create a local testing server and download PHP. Thankfully after a few failed attempts, I created the testing environment by using XAMPP. I realised that in order to use PHP to its full potential I would need a MySQL database, at this point I really did get confused.

The problem I faced was how could I possibly create a Learning Plan and develop a technical specification knowing nothing about PHP or MySQL.

After watching a few videos on PHP and taking notes, I began playing with Variables, Arrays and If Else statements, although I found this experience very useful, I couldn’t quite understand how I could use what I had learnt in the real world situation until stumbling upon the HTML form with PHP

Thankfully by choosing to develop a website for my Parents walking club gave me the perfect opportunity to integrate a PHP feedback form. Following an initial meeting with my parents, I drafted a learning plan and created technical specification.

Although I am happy, I have decided that I will include a PHP feedback form that links mailing a reply via email. I might regret I did not do something more challenging later.



27th Jan

• Serverside vs Client side programming
• Installing PHP
• XAMPP
• Writing My first PHP
• Mixing PHP with html
• PHP Variables
• Variable Interpolation expansion
• Using numbers as Value
• Watching Killerphp video and made notes

28th Jan

• Variable
• Defined SMLP
• two variables on one line
• If Else Statement

29th Jan

• Added Merit and Distinctions to SMLP

31st Jan

• PHP Arrays
• Indexed Arrays
• Associative Arrays
• Assigning numeric value

1st Feb

• Processing a HTML Form with PHP
  (using attributes action = form response and method = post)
• Logo development
• Watching Killer PHP Videos

4th Feb

• Wrote brief for Website
• Started Logo design

7th Feb

• Setup domain name and hosting
• Developed logo design

8th February

• Practising PHP videos
• writing comments or statements
• Saving form Input in Variables
• Understanding the four basic variables data types

9th Feb
Creating and practising how to create a simple form in html in php

Step 1: HTML Code view
Step 1: HTML Browser view
Step 2: PHP code view
Step 3: HTML code view
Step 3: HTML Browser view
10th
Trying to create a MySQL database

11th February

• Learning what php is and why I would use it
• Problems setting up MySQL

• Initial form proposal, PHP reply, email feedback
• Development of programme using an (if else function and a MySQL database)
• List of things needed for PHP my MySQL Admin
  
• - Text editors - Webserver - PHP - Database

Researching PHP’s impact as an essential skill required in the web design industry (M3)

What is PHP and why would I use it ?
When you have discovered the limits of XHTML, PHP gives you that little bit more without using JavaScript. PHP allows developers to create dynamic webpage’s and is open source free software. PHP is cross platform compatible and can be deployed to any browser on any operating system.

From the very beginning in 1994, PHP was written with web development in mind. In fact it was originally developed to assist and maintain a personal website, hence the name Personal Home Page tools. Robust enough to handle the traffic it processes with the ability to grow as web traffic increases. Over the years it has been redeveloped with the current version being PHP5. Unfortunately now PHP stands for Hypertext Pre-processor, despite such a dull name it is currently used on over 20 million websites with the an active developer community increasing every day. Wordpress is just one application that uses PHP to allow the user to create blogs.

As a scripting language PHP will only do something in response to an event however, unlike other languages such as JavaScript, PHP it runs on server side and not client side. One benefit of this is that the code is pre-processed and never seen by the clients computer.

With a similar syntax as java or perl, PHP provides more flexibility to html, giving the web designer the ability to create dynamic web pages either based on interaction with the user or data stored in the database. PHP can still return HTML to the browser allowing PHP to be the input and the webpage’s to be outputted.

In order to use PHP effectively it is necessary to have a testing server, this can be your computer with a browser that can review files. In order for the sever to understand PHP it is necessary to download a version of xammp.