Check out my portfolio website –http://www.veronikalesnakova.co.uk/
If you like what you see and you have a project in mind then I’m happy to hear from you.
Category: Interactive Comms Practice (S3)
The links
Here are the links to the Astrology and the 4 Elements website and blog –
Astrology and the 4 Elements – www.veronikalesnakova.co.uk/4elements
ADMIN – www.veronikalesnakova.co.uk/4elements/CMS/
Blog – www.veronikalesnakova.wordpress.com
Presentation
Here is the presentation of my project –
Evaluation
Full project was very challenging and I learnt so much while working on it.
Things that I have learnt –
- building CMS
- not dragging files from local server to remote server and the reasons why!!!
- relational tables in MySQL
- SEO – using Webmaster tools, Google Analytics, PageSpeed Insights, XML sitemaps, rich snippets
- create full booking form
- creating one page website – problems that might occur while designing it
- discovery phase – persona, style approach, mood board
- new wire framing tools
- deciding what web hosting provider is the right for me and purchasing it
- dealing with My cPanel – creating databases
- and many more things that I came across to
Browsers
This website works in these browsers –
- Firefox 34.0.5
- Internet Explorer 11
- Chrome 38.0.2125.111
- Safari
- Opera
- Mobiles/tablets
Even thought I had to face some difficulties with this project, the biggest one was not working CMS as I did some mistakes in code and also dragged files around and that is why I had to create CMS twice from the begging) I think that this project was very successful at the end. I am happy how it all turned up and what I created.
Future improvements
Improvements that I would like to make in the future for this project are –
- make map in location responsive so when users view it on mobile, it does not stick out
- make gallery dynamic
- ADMIN – make it responsive
- ADMIN – uploading images dynamically
User testing
I did user testing of the website throughout the full designing process and that is why I did quite a lot adjustments to the design and also to the back end of the site.
My last user testing was very positive and I did not get negative feedback.
SEO – XML sitemap
XML site maps are there for Google to easier orientate in pages of your website. This helps with SEO.
There is sitemap generator called XML-sitemap generator that helps you with it.
This is the main page of this website where you basically need to type full URL of your website and click ‘Start’.
This is what you get after your sitemap is ready to be used –
All you have to do now is to download your site map and put the file in root folder. In Webmaster account open ‘Sitemaps option’ and press on ‘Add sitemap’. Then just type name of the file and submit sitemap.
Job is done!
At the moment it tells me that I have an error there but I did all they recommended me to do and it is still there. Later on, I noticed that my sitemap is still pending in process window. This is why I decided to wait 24 hours and see if it is going to make any difference as I just installed it on the Webmaster tool.
SEO – Google Analytics
I decided to implement Google Analytics to the website to see what activity is on the website, where users come from, what devices they use to browse my website (possible future improvements), how much time they spend on the website etc. This tool is great to help you with SEO.
I already have one account that is tracking my personal website so I needed to add a new one. After I added the website into account, it gave me tracking code that I need to now implement into every page of the website that I want to be tracked.
This code is JavaScript code which is added before closing </head> tag.
There is also PHP implementation of this code which is optional and it’s done with include. It’d be easier to do it with include if there is website with many pages but I am going to just copy and paste the code before closing </head> tag.
This is what home page looks like with all your tracking websites –
After clicking on ‘All website data’, you should get all your information however, mine is empty with no information as I just installed it and it can take up to 24 hours to receive any information. And even after that, information depends on how much users visit your website.
SEO – Webmaster tools
I decided to check the website with Webmaster tools to see if there is anything I can improve. (For more information about Webmaster tools, please read my previous post here)
Once, the website was successfully verified, I could start to add data. Unfortunately, I could not see any information about the website yet as not a lot of people visited it.
Data Highlighter
As I was doing my SEO research, I came across to ‘rich snippets’. (for more information please read here)
Webmaster tools give you option to add ‘rich snippets’ right there so you don’t need any different tools for it.
Every time I tried to add rich snippets into the website, I could not do it as this message appeared –
I tried to fix it but it wasn’t working.
SEO – PageSpeed Insights test
As part of my SEO, I did PageSpeed Insights to see how long it takes the website to be downloaded and what I can do to make it faster.
This is the result for mobile –
This is the result for desktop –
Overall, it is not too bad but there are still things to fix. Unfortunately, I do not have time to fix it now but this is the future improvement that I would like to make.
