This is a diary, if you will, of my major learning projects from 2018 and on, in chronological order more or less. If they’re listed here, it means I spent way too many hours to get something right.

I regret that I didn’t put dates for the early items as I was struggling with them. I do keep this up-to-date:

• Using the Divi WordPress theme (I’ve abandoned this theme and probably won’t use it again)
• Bootstrap
• Sass/SCSS
• Seriously learning Adobe Illustrator
• Using Visual Studio Code and relevant extensions
• Git and Github
• Setting up a web server (on my reseller’s hosting account)
• Setting up an invoicing system using WHMCS and Quickbooks
• Setting up a local development environment using WAMP
• Creating an email contact form using PHPMailer – still tweaking this many months later
• PHP
• Experimenting with different CMS framework tools before determining WordPress was still my best choice
• Building a custom WordPress theme for this website (ongoing)
• Working with various WordPress plugins, most notably Advanced Custom Fields and Revolution Slider (kinda glitchy)
• Working on the content for this website and my business branding, graphics, pricing structures, policies, etc.
• CSS Flexbox and Grid
• Adobe XD for website mockups
• Javascript, total beginner in January 2022, using it more successfully in current projects
• Avada WordPress theme (as needed to troubleshoot a client’s website)
• Shopify Buy button
• AWS Lightsail virtual machine with Ubuntu OS, LAMP stack installed. Abandoned previous hosting account.
• Paypal subscription button
• Postfix in Ubuntu to facilitate sending mail from the server
• Build an app using data from a QuickBooks API (mid-February 2022 / mostly finished and in use September 2022)
• Postman
• Using the GET method on forms – demystifying POST vs GET
• Twilio API / curl (to get the status for SMS texts sent) (end of April 2022)
• PHP cURL requests
• Reading/writing data to database with mySQL
• Google Apps Script to create a web-based price estimator
• WooCommerce store – built a full-fledged online store containing products with variations. https://paulelderart.com

I’m not an expert in any of this stuff – I’m calling myself intermediate or beginner on most of it.

Concerning the list above, I should mention that I do have some background in computer programming. I had a few programming classes at Southwestern College back in the day, and although I didn’t pursue a career in the field, I really loved those classes and had many opportunities to use that knowledge throughout my working life.

My prior experience in web design also taught me how to navigate the domain registrar / web hosting / email / DNS bureaucratic labyrinth. I don’t claim to fully understand all of it but I always get everything pointed in the right direction. I am proud to be an expert at waiting on hold for tech support. I also do a mean tech support chat.

I took a decade-long hiatus from web design. That was more than enough time for all my familiar methods to become obsolete. To be honest, my methods were never very cutting edge to begin with.

In 2018 I decided to try my hand at freelance web design. Dreamweaver was my web development software of choice at the time, and while setting up my new website folder I again encountered a bunch of the same settings that I’d always just ignored. Those mysterious tools like Bootstrap, Git and SASS were for real web developers and really weren’t necessary to eek out a simple HTML website.

This time, though, I’d just left my real job to do websites. I’d already intended to update my skills and there were frameworks, repositories, preprocessors and programming languages to learn — all quite daunting. At that moment, those Dreamweaver settings seemed like a very logical place to start.

I started watching hours of YouTube, Linkedin Learning and Skillshare classes and tutorials on web development. I joined all the relevant subreddits to see what developers are working on, and I made it a point to incorporate any relevant new skills into my own website.

This website has gone through a few major design and technology changes, and has served as my training ground. Anything I’ve learned that seems immediately useful and practical gets implemented here. I’ve also built some websites for new clients, which has helped build confidence.

• Learn more about Dockers
• Rebuild my secondary website in React