Legacy conversion/new template for website

The Legacy has fully converted to using the website for distributing their articles rather than using PDF files. This has proven to be a much more efficient way for articles to be published. On another note, Ms. Oster approached me recently and said that the E-Commerce I & II classes will be creating templates for the Apex website and if one of them seems suitable for the site, we will implement it. This should be a very challenging task if the plan the goes through, because every page on the site would need to be redesigned again.

New template for Apex site

Recently, WCPSS told all of the schools that there had to be a small picture displaying the new assignment plans for the 2012-13 school year and it must be displayed on the homepage of every school's website. Our website already had a bunch of small pictures that are links to other websites on our homepage. So Ms. Oster approached me and asked me to change the layout of the template by moving all of the picture links to the left side of the news feed, and keep all of the text links to the right of the feed. At first, this task seemed easy. But as I dug deeper and deeper into the code and how it was laid out, I discovered that this would be difficult. I had a temporary fix developed and tested it out. It had a few bugs but was workable. At this point, the new template wasn't ready to be released to the Internet, but I accidentally sent it to the local servers. This, in turn, temporarily made Apex's website incapable of use. So I had to be quick on my feet (and hands you could say). I had to find a stable version of the template that we had saved. I quickly applied it to the site while I tried to fix the new template. I had to stay late for about an hour to sort out the mess I had caused. After a long hour of tests and code reconstruction I finally found a solution that worked. I applied it to the site and reuploaded the entire site, which took a good 20 minutes, and we finally had our new school website launched. Close call!

Legacy finished

Finally finished the Legacy's website. The template is basically a copy of the Apex template with a few color changes and logo changes. I have also created a PDF document that fully explains how to edit the website for the Legacy. The site's code is set up to be the most user-friendly it can possibly be.

Legacy progress

I've made progress with the Legacy website but it is still has a ways to go before completion. Creating a template for the website is definitely the hardest part. I've been working on it from my home computer and playing around with a few ideas to see what will works best. I hope to have it completed by mid-November. This is definitely the hardest task I've had so far.

LED board software/Staff listing update

I've been having a few issues with the software that updates the LED software. It's not a big problem but it is very tedious and sometimes aggravating. When I create new slides with information, sometimes the slide won't save and when I try to reopen it to edit it again, it's gone. On other rare occasions, I will get an error box saying I'm not allowed to type any more text on this slide, even though I've typed one or two words at max. These problems only come up every once in a while so it's not a huge issue, but an update to the software could benefit future webmasters. Also, on the Apex website we have a page with all of the staff listed. It has their last name, first name, department, and email address. To help users view the page easier, I've added a feature that allows visitors to sort the table by any of the four categories listed. I've also added <a name> tags which allows the user to click on a letter of the alphabet (which is already listed on the page) and the browser will immediately jump to the staff members with that letter of the alphabet.

New website #2

I was again approached by someone else who needed a website for use. Mrs. Knall asked me if I could create a website for the Apex Legacy to use. They currently publish their articles through PDF files and, in turn, I post them on the Apex High website. They wanted to change this process so that they, themselves, could post their articles without the help of a webmaster. This task was difficult because I now have to create a website that runs off of the same software and local server that the school's website uses. This is still a work in progress.

New website

I was approached by Eric Bolender today and he asked me if I would be willing to develop a website for the Key Club at Apex (which Eric is a part of). I immediately said yes, as it would not be that hard of a task to complete. I created the website on my home computer, which it is solely running from. The website features a calendar of events, officer duties, and many other helpful things for the club to use. Overall, they are very satisfied with it.

Updates to the site/LED Board introduction

Lately, I've become more familiar with adding news to the homepage of our school's website as well as managing the Google Docs page we have set up for staff members to submit news to be added. It can be very nit-picky at times because of how fragile the code is. I'm looking for a solution to make the site more user-friendly for webmasters and staff members to edit the site sufficiently. I've also started working with our school's LED board. At the end of the last school year, I was shown how to edit the LED board and update it using the software already installed on the computer. It's actually a lot simpler than I thought. I've added many events that are shown on the LED board, rather than just the main sports games that are announced. I show club meetings, staff meetings, field trips, in addition to all of the sports teams games.

First days on the job

I've recently started my internship here at the school and have gotten fully acquainted with what I will be doing during my year-long experience. I've spent the last 2 days becoming familiar with the template we use for our school's website by analyzing the HTML and design scheme that are already implemented. The template itself isn't that complicated to handle, but applying it to every page does take some time. One thing I love so far, is the ability to add my creativity to the site. I've made each page uniform so they're all identical in terms of design and layout. So far so good!