Week 2 Wordpress/PHP HW

Visualization

Last time I worked on things, I noticed I was having a hard time achiving something that looked good and easy for users to navigate through. So I read some of jims book and other articles about how to make things look more visually appealing. For now I'm compiling a list of changes I need to make to the wordpress website right off the bat.

Fix my Forms

• Make forms one column so as not to disrupt users vertical momentum
• Make sure using top-aligned lables
• Group labels with inputs/placeholders- so users don't get confused if there isin't enough height between the fields
• avoid all caps bc they are harder for users to scan
• show all selection options if under six- this is a big one, it reduces number of clicks to get information and I think there are several places on the site this can be utilized
• make sure checkboxes are under each other rather than side-to-side to increase scanability
• make buttons descriptive and indicate the primary option - don't say "submit" say "sign up"
• on that note, make the buttons look like buttons (CHANGE BUTTONS FROM CURRENT FLAT STATE)
• specify errors inline and don't specify them AS THE USER is filling out the form
• don't hide helper text or anything that indicates filling it out is optional - just say it
• use field length as an affordance, zip code needs to be shorter
• make sure related information is grouped - so like , "person" , "account" labels for the field groups

What I actually ended up doing

So the homepage looks really bad (see image 1)I wouldn't actually keep the exclamation mark after "scottish lace" but you get the idea. it needs some sparkle. I did make sure the buttons and pictures had some depth (check out the rather crummy shadows underneath the lace pictures in image 1)..

...then, I kid you not, I spent about 4 hours making logos or ANYTHING to spice up the front page in a way that could also be widely accepted by the public. Check out image two. and I finally settled on image 3. Then. I spent a lot of time reading about the SVG code and how to insert it in and did try that a few times. Got error messages within the css, so currently debugging that.

Oh, even before all of that I spent a couple of hours trying to get the thing onto github. I think I've finally succedded, however, it seems that when I try to commit it endless attempts to execute, so, it either takes an hour (which is very possible as wordpress sites are huge) or it doesn't work. So I need a good hour where I know my computer will be open, and where I"ve made some changes, to see if I actually successfully did that. But I did download the github synch plugin and activated it so should work.

attachments

		last modified	size
	Image3.png	Wed Dec 04 2024 08:44 am	17K
	image2.png	Wed Dec 04 2024 08:44 am	121K