I decided to create the e-commerce site first because I had already come up with an idea of what I wanted to sell on the site. So, when it came to creating the news site, I already pretty much had a grasp of how Wordpress functioned and what I needed to do to create the news site. I did get to work a bit more with plugins on the news site, adding an email subscription popup when you first open the page. I also got a bit more familiar with embedding links on this site to create a related stories block on my two complete stories. I used two stories I personally wrote, and I also used several stories I found on the New York Times. I’m really proud of how the site functions overall all from the plugin to the embedded links.
carriejordanmedia.com/project-three/news/
I did the e-commerce site first. I struggled with getting posts to show up on a particular page, because, unlike the news site, I wanted the home page of my shop to be just general information like return policies and an about us section. However, once I resolved the issue, I had no other problems posting except for getting the featured image on a post to look right on both the for sale page and the item page. Some pictures didn’t crop correctly and others showed up multiple times, so it took a bit of extra work to make everything look nice. I also like how the product reviews look on the item pages. I think those types of little details really pull the site together.
carriejordanmedia.com/project-three/commerce/
Overall, I really enjoyed the WordPress unit. Creating professional looking websites is really what I wanted to get out of this course, and I think the WordPress sites I built look pretty good. I struggled a bit with the coding in earlier units, so getting to focus more on design and readership was a really nice unit project to end on.