Weekly reflection for October 18, 2019

[washingtonb21]

I structured the table of contents in a similar fashion to a book. It will begin with an h2 heading with the issue number at the top of the page, followed by “Table of Contents” directly underneath. Both of these elements will be centered. The Editor’s Note and List of Contributors will be h5 headings centered under the h2 headings. Each section of the issue will be clearly labeled with an h1 heading on the left side of the screen. The headings will each be a different color that appears in the Shenandoah logo. Next to each of these headings, the title of each work will be listed as a paragraph, with author’s name underneath the title in a smaller, italicized text. Since there are so many poems, there will be two columns to reduce the amount of scrolling necessary. The page will finish with the regular site footer.

Here is the link to a preliminary version of the structure I envision: https://jsbin.com/cewabug/edit?html,css,output#C:L3

Here is the wireframe I have designed: Shenandoah Table of Contents.pdf

[gsella20]

This week I researched best practices for using Github project boards. I started off by familiarizing myself with the purpose of using this feature and learned how it keeps projects organized using a column format, which can be manipulated. Next, I looked at some of the project boards Shenandoah had created to understand how they were operating. I watched a few videos about how to use project boards and read several help pages to further understand how the feature worked and how to use it effectively. It would a little more experience and time using project boards for me to fully understand how it works, but I have a pretty general understanding of how to create a project now and manage it using this feature. One thing that I kept reading was that in order to get the most out of project boards, all members of a team should be on the same page with expectations of how frequently the boards should be updated. Actively managing a project in this feature keeps everything transparent and is a good way to keep in constant communication about ongoing work. I also create a markdown document explaining the best practices for using project boards. I was able to do this on the Dillinger website. I really enjoyed using markdown, compare to the other text programs I have used before. It was pretty intuitive and very manageable. However, I did struggle to insert images where I wanted to.

[chambersa20]

This week I have been examining Shenandoah's WordPress multisite and diagramming its structure. One of the major questions I have is how to seamlessly integrate the fourteen online issues which use the old theme. I hadn't noticed before doing this that even though each of the volumes is divided into two issues, each issue is a completely separate WP site. Does grouping the issues by volume matter, or because there are only two issues per volume, is it easy enough for a user to navigate?

[younga20]

I haven't been doing anything task based this week, but I have been thinking about the design of a webpage and I am excited to work on things in the future.

[coletta1]

When we met, I got a look at the code for Shenandoah, and then I got to go look around for myself afterward. I'm not super familiar with php but from all the files I've looked at, it seems pretty intuitive, and the internet has a whole lot of resources. I'm confused about the process of actually testing out code though. When I've done stuff like this before, we had a test server that we used, so I'm not sure I see how to to do it not on the actual site. I think something was mentioned about maybe the unpublished version, but I think I need some clarification.