My web development journey began on the 30th December 2019 when I chose it to be my Duke of Edinburgh Gold Award skill. For the next five months I spent an hour or more each week learning about HTML and CSS. I completed course videos by Traversy Media on both before doing HTML and CSS courses on Code Academy.

I began codedbydavid.com on the 2nd May 2020 and have worked extensively on it for over four months. This project has had many ups and downs. I've found it particularly challenging since it is my first and only attempt at a website. I have no doubt I could have created the website quicker with some more profound understanding. However, as I draw the website to a finish, I feel very confident and optimistic about my web design skills. A notable challenge I had was making the website fit all screen sizes - something I did not consider until very far along in the project. This was certainly a low point however I was pleased when I had successfully implemented a responsive feature.

My intentions were to use the website to display all the computer science work I have been working on. This includes a wide range of programming projects, essays, research projects and book reviews. I also included some recaps of my work experience.

I have also learned about using real life hosting and domain names - something we learn about but never do in school. I am pleased to see how straight forward it is and I am confident this will be useful in the future.

Overall I have really enjoyed my web development journey. It is massively different to programming and actually quite challenging. Whilst there is no logic and calculations to be done, it is very difficult to spot mistakes since they will not be flagged. Another problem I had is often some CSS rules would affect other HTML elements as well as the targeted element. This posed some good challenges for me to develope my understanding.

The special effects and transitions were not my creation. I used internet tutorials to implement them into my code since this is simply too advanced for me. What I would say, however, was that I really developed an understanding for these effects since sometimes they would not work with my current CSS settings. This meant I had to identify the problem and produce a solution which all the effects and elements agree with.

I thank you for taking the time to look at my website. I hope you enjoyed exploring it and have a great day - David