Projects
Beauty By Mao
Portfolio
Total Lawn Care
Portfolio
About the Project
The main purpose of my personal portfolio site was to showcase my work and get back into web development. Many times when applying for work they would ask if I had a portfolio site. As a front-end developer it probably seemed weird that my answer was a "no". Well, not anymore! It was a long time coming but now my site is live and ready for action.
What We Were Up Against
This was my first project using several new concepts to me. The good thing is that's kind of what this project, and my career, is all about.
At the time of the build, Bootstrap 4 was still in Alpha. I had some experience with Bootstrap prior to this project but there were several changes to Bootstrap 4 even in comparison to version 3.
Most of my web experience has been on the ASP.NET platform. However, .NET released a relatively new framework called .NET Core right before starting this project. The majority of what I needed was pre set-up, but there were a few nuances to get a grasp of.
It was a long time coming, but I finally got my hands dirty with Sass. It was pretty simple to pick up and get going. Figuring out that I had to compile my code before I could use it however was a little different for me since I was used to staight HTML and CSS websites.
Compiling was a pretty new concept to me. .NET Core comes with BundlerMinifier for bundling and minifying. I took a go at it for a bit but it wasn't working as nicely as I had hoped. Which led me to Gulp which plays so nicely with .NET Core out of the box. I spent a few hours figuring out just what I was looking at and after all was said and done, like Sass, I can't see myself going forward without it.
What's Next?
Being this website is my own, I don't think it will ever be finished. I guess you could say that about all websites, but this is my little playground. I can try new things, break things, make some ugly graphics and I'll be the only one who suffers the consequences.
So, what is next? When it came to building the pages and content I quickly realized how nice it would be to utilize Razor syntax a little more in unison with a javascript framework such as the new Angular 2. Right now all the portfolio content is all static pages which is a lot of work both creating and maintaining the pages.
What's probably most important is adding more content. This of course means obtaining more clients and building some awesome websites. So, if you're reading this and you have a project you need done or have someone else in mind; please, lead them here and get in contact with me!
Total Lawn Care
About the Project
Total Lawn Care was the first shot I took at creating a website entirely on my own. My Cousin had recently purchased a lawn care company and I asked if he needed an online presence. I first built the site while still in school but it has since seen an update. The redesign was my first full-site dive into creating a responsive website. I used Bootstrap framework to assist in doing so.
Bootstrap 3
This was my first time using Bootstrap. It wasn't really a game changer as I already had a decent understanding of how to build responsively. In the end, it became obvious that it was built using 'Bootstrap' but it was worth trying out.
What's Next?
As stated earlier, you can tell the site was built using Bootstrap which isn't exactly what I want. The site needs an update. This was my first project completely built on my own and so looking back at it now I can envision some design improvements.
Also, as with all of my projects currently, the site could use some performance enhancements.
Beauty By Mao
Deatils Coming Soon!
You can view the website directly by visiting www.beautybymao.com.