Programming

I started programming last night! Wow it has been a while. I read some tutorials to refresh myself...the first hour was very frustrating. It's starting to come back to me; I don't think it will take quite as long as I thought it would (knock on wood).
I also installed a CSS plugin for firefox which is very helpful. Unfortunately it's only available for older versions of firefox so I had to downgrade.
The link for the plugin is here.

Fingers crossed!

I showed the class my psd file last class which included all of the inside pages. There was some good feedback and just some minor tweaks. I made those tweaks and sent to Doug a few minutes ago. Once I receive approval I will start on the programming which I am actually very nervous about. I have a feeling I'm being too ambitious and won't be able to have the entire site finished by the time it's due.
Fingers crossed!

Reading Break...what??!

So I didn't really get a break this past week...working 40 hours while going to school will do that to you. But that's ok. I made some revisions to my home page and got it ok'd by Doug. I now have all the inside pages designed, including rollovers and subnav. I will be showing it to the class tomorrow and I'm sure I'll want to make some more changes after that. Once the design is totally signed off on I'll start programming. In the meantime, I'm familiarizing myself with Volusion's CMS and trying to brush up on my dusty programming skills.

Feedback

Last week I showed a jpg of what I've designed so far from my website. I received some great feedback from both Doug and the rest of the class. It was really helpful to show it as they brought up some things I probably wouldn't have thought about otherwise. I just made some revisions and emailed it to Doug. Waiting to hear his thoughts before moving on with the inside pages.

Ongoing Design

Design is going well. I have been making some tweaks to the home page and plan on starting the layout of the inside pages very soon. I also setup my blog which I will link to from my site. I've been familiarizing myself with Volusion - fortunately they have a great support system.
I plan on running my design my Doug tomorrow before I go any further.

WOOHOO!

Information Architecture and User Personas are approved! YAY! There were a few spelling mistakes in my user personas - oops. And I could have expanded more on one of them...but now I get to move onto the fun part: the design.

Sigh

Well I had a little mini breakdown this week. It's just so hard to balance school and work. But I'm doing better now - I have my learning contract and briefing document signed off and I've created my user personas as well as my information architecture. Hopefully I will get those signed off tomorrow. Next step is signing up for Volusion and creating the design - the FUN part! yay :)