Mazzuccato

Haha! I am still around.. :-
 
Have a nice Bank Holiday weekend! :-

Totally understand you and I can related to it. I've been there once or twice myself.
 
Focusing on other priority stuff and putting this aside for now is the way to go.

I think he left forever

For now forget about Angular and React / any other framework. Spend time just with JavaScript. If you don't understand closure, prototypes hoisting and a bunch of other things including raw DOM manipulation you're not yet ready for a front-end framework.

While it's worth learning both Angular and React I can say I will never build a new project in Angular again, I don't normally ditch tools, but angular tries to be the super multitool whereas React is just the UI and then that can be paired with other tools to build your application.
 
The way Angular tries to deal with state overtime is really poor in comparison to React. There's a whole bunch of other reasons too. Angular also takes way longer to learn as it's so monolithic - there's a directive for everything, whereas with React when you wish to solve things you just use JavaScript, and with our friend NPM a useful module / abstraction is only an 'NPM install' away.
 
Be prepared to spend many, many hours learning JavaScript before you're ready for React. I probably spent a good 500+ hours learning and working with JavaScript before I was ready to start looking at React.

That pretty much sums it all, however sometimes you need to know where to stop. A weekend off here and there would only hep you clear your head and regroup.

That doesn't have to be entirely true in my opinion. Otherwise small and medium businesses wouldn't hire social media marketing teams / managers and the whole social media marketing field would not exist.
 
Social presence is important, it's gone way beyond "telling your mates about stuff you like", likes, shares, retweet and followers. Social media, when done right, does indeed generate leads, more business and brand / product awareness.
 
I have seen the above happening and I have also seen it failing. So, in conclusion, "Social media doesn't work" is kind of a broad statement, as one size doesn't fit all.

Here's the React course I am taking - https://reactforbeginners.com/
 
Codeschool.com have good courses on various languages, tools and frameworks - https://www.codeschool.com/ Their javascript path is worth it, along with other courses, like the one on MongoDB. I like how their courses can be taken as a standalone items or in conjunction with other courses, for example the MEAN stack path - https://www.codeschool.com/mean
 
Front end masters is great and well worth it! Great workshops from industry top experts. I love Kyle Simpson's courses

Hey Teodora!,
 
Thank you for your detailed reply. I greatly appreciate it.
 
I see, you are or were working on an old app, OK makes perfect sense.It helps explain a lot and your perspective on it and the way you are approaching it.
 
Yes, there was a time when I first looked at html or css or javascript or php or whatnot and be dumbfounded! Fortunately I am no longer at this stage but like you say, there is always something you seem to learn or discover new as you go along.
 
 
Reading between the lines, you appear to like or recommend the frontend masters series courses so I will hopefully check these out in due course when I am ready for this kind of stuff.
 
Have an awesome Friday!

Welcome to WDF Hope you enjoy it here.

@@Mazzuccato
 
I thought it would be better to answer your question in this thread instead as a status update.
 
What prompted me to learn React?
 
Last year I realised my front end knowledge wasn't at the level I wanted it to be at - everything moves so fast and front end is no longer simple html and css. In terms of javascript, I was "a bit of jquery and a lot of google-ing" type of developer.
Then I started learning - vanilla javascript, css preprocessors, task runners, node js, etc.
I am still learning, of course, always learning, like all of us.
 
The particular reason I am learning React right now is because I intend to use it to revive and expand an app I have been working on.
 
You're right, there are so many different technologies out there, more come out every day and you can get confused as to what you need next.
React and Angular have established themselves as useful frameworks that won't be just-another-thing-to-learn-because-everyone-else-is-doing-it and knowing either (or both) is a great advantage.
 
How difficult it is?
 
As with everything else, there is a learning curve. You need to have a decent knowledge of javascript, command line, task runners, bit of node, etc, so you are aware of how the whole thing works together.
 
I haven't gone too far with course yet, from what I have seen so far, it's not overcomplicated and not too difficult to get your head around React.
 
Angular or React? I want to get a feel of how both work, to be familiar with both of them, so I can understand for myself the purpose of each one and what can be done with them. Additional courses, like NoSQL databases, MongoDB in particular, are also great to go through.
 
Difficult to say how long it would take to learn something, I'd just pick something and start learning and practising, the more you practise, the more you understand it
 
hth

Hi and welcome to WDF

Hi guys,
 
I thought it would be cool to start a topic for people to share sites they find useful for their design/development processes. Here is a list of sites I find useful and/or use regularly:
 
General Stuff:
http://jsfiddle.net/ - Useful for JavaScript troubleshooting. Test your code and just play around with HTML/CSS and JavaScript. If you're looking for help with a piece of code, save your Fiddle and send it to someone else who can take a look at it You can also save revisions of your Fiddle to track your progress. http://pastebin.com/ - Useful for sharing code online. Useful for when you run in to a bit of trouble with some server-side code. Instead of pasting masses of lines inside a topic, paste your code in to pastebin and get someone to have a look at it for you http://jsonlint.com/ - JSON Validator http://paletton.com/ - Color Scheme Designer. See what colours complement each other etc. Useful stuff. http://www.lipsum.com/ - Lorem Ipsum - Useful for inserting dummy text in to your web pages. http://net.tutsplus.com/category/tutorials/php/ - PHP tutorials, quizzes etc. They also do the same for JavaScript, HTML, CSS, WordPress, ASP.NET to name a few. Really good site.  
Javascript:
You Don't Know JavaScript - https://github.com/getify/You-Dont-Know-JS JavaScript scene https://medium.com/javascript-scene Webpack Asset bundler https://webpack.js.org/ Jest, Automated tests for JavaScript https://facebook.github.io/jest/  
CSS:
http://css3generator.com/ - Generate CSS3. Box Shadow, Border Radius etc. http://border-radius.com/ - Generate border radius quickly! http://www.javascripter.net/faq/hextorgb.htm - HEX to RGB conversion. http://meyerweb.com/eric/tools/css/reset/ - CSS Reset Stylesheet. Resolve browser inconsistencies such as varying margins/padding. http://www.cssplay.co.uk - Lots of experiments with CSS, menus and layouts. CSS Wizardry: https://csswizardry.com/ Sass Guidelines https://sass-guidelin.es/  
Responsive Design:
http://www.getskeleton.com/ - Responsive Grid. Nebula - a framework built by WDF member, rbrtsmith: https://nebulaui.github.io/nebula/  
Server-Side Coding:
http://net.tutsplus.com/tutorials/php/php-database-access-are-you-doing-it-correctly/ - How to connect to a database using PDO http://www.php.net/manual/en/index.php - PHP manual for everything PHP!  
Form Validation (Client-Side):
https://jqueryvalidation.org/ - (My preferred method) Simple to use. Include the necessary jQuery and Validation.js files. Simple usage example, call the function using $('#myForm').validate(); and add a class="required" to fields you want to validate Also allows you to create custom messages and make the validation more advanced! I hope these are useful! If anyone has any others to share, please do
 
Lyndsey.

We've gone over this already, you don't have to create something groundbreakingly original. The problem with a lot of premade scripts is that they are trying to be a swiss army knife when all you need is a screwdriver. All that extra functionality is bloat, and the screwdriver provided by the swiss army knife is not engineered exactly for the kind of screw you are using. What you need is something bespoke to pair well with the unique screw you have, otherwise it's just shoehorned in and the result is amateurish at best.
That analogy translates very well to development.
 
It's not always the case and I do use libraries when I think they are a good fit for the task at hand, but that isn't your problem here. Your problem is inexperience at actually writing JavaScript.
 
Just focus on writing code and practice. Originality in conception won't make you a better programmer. Practicing to code will. Stop looking for some kind of magic to suddenly 'get it' it doesn't work like that, it takes continual progression and many, many hours of practice.

If you work on every-day projects, you'll find out while everything you can think of might have been done already, there always is something that requires you to build a custom plugin or write a custom script to suit your project.
 
In view of that, yes, I find it 100% better to write my own script (minus the cases where one doesn't need to reinvent the wheel, e.g. basic sliders, etc.).
With your own work you have a chance to learn and improve.

I'll keep things brief.
 
There are no shortcuts You will never learn everything there is to know Developers get paid a lot of money because it is difficult to code and takes considerable effort and time to become competent. To become good requires thousands of hours. The true experts make an absolute fortune, even those whose expertise is in CSS which is considered one of the easiest 'languages' to learn, because even it has it's nuances and quirks and to deeply understand architecture for large codebases is an extremely difficult skill to acquire. In short you either learn enough to do what you want to do for this particular instance, or hire somebody to do it for you (Of course paying them fairly)
 
Based on your post I'd advise the latter. Otherwise take a look at sitebuilders like squarespace, but you will be limited by their software so it's unlikely you will get 100% of what you want. If you budget for a good developer almost anything is possible.

Well, the OP can always use semantic tags and microdata for the navigation and anchors, this is something Google gets.
 
I, however, agree with the previous few posts that the "interesting" factor should come from elsewhere - navigation is one of the very few things which should follow an established and recognisable pattern.
 
Also, of course, buying a ready theme and modifying it often costs more and takes longer than scratch work (not to mention branding, performance, scalability, etc, etc).

This. And also not everything is possible with CSS, a huge proportion of it is dependant upon the structure of the markup.
 
In my opinion the 'boss' needs to hire a developer or an agency to do the work rather than expecting somebody with little experience to work miracles, this can only go one way.

You need to edit your theme. The header image is probably set in header.php and the title in various templates. So it's unlikely you will be able to do this easily. But that's where you need to start.

It depends how good your JavaScript and DOM knowledge is. If both are solid React is quite minimal and can be learnt in a relatively short period of time. React only cares about the UI layer of your application, the state and business logic you write with plain old JavaScript or you handle those with other libraries like Redux for state.

Your initial sentence about learning HTML and CSS is valid, the bit about not having to learn JavaScript and PHP is nonsense, if you are learning to become a professional then learn what is required. Copy and paste is a recipe for disaster, what happens if the client wants to make a change... you don't understand the code, what about the performance - that matters. What about the security implications, your copied and pasted code could leave the website open to XSS attacks or worse.
 
To the OP I'd be wary of this course, an overwhelming percentage of them are of a very poor standard. Online ones like Treehouse and CodeSchool I would bet a lot of money of being a much higher standard.

And this rant is not targeted at small business owners who don't have the budget or at people who need a quick MVP (although a lot can be said re. desired MVP quality). It's for agencies who charge many 1000s of pounds for the above mentioned type of pre-made built, essentially conning people and giving the industry a bad name.

Pros: Great online community, plenty of resources and support, relatively easy learning curve and well documented and regularly updated codex.
 
However...
 
Front and back end are completely mixed up. As @@Jack commented in another thread, lack of native templating language and non MVC architecture make it difficult to achieve separation of business and application logic.
Forcing markup decisions on developers - you have to write a ton of code and reference the built-in classes to achieve basic markup changes.
URL re-writing is a nightmare.
Forcing default scripts and structure on developers - bloated front-end.
Slow database queries.
Lack of basic functionality, which very CMS should support as default imo (might be wrong on this one) such as breadcrumbs, proper pagination, etc.
 
It's not impossible to have a great, fast, well working site bulit on WP, but, well, why spend time, when you can install WP, buy a theme, install 10 or so plugins and you have (as @@citypaul said) something that resembles a site in a few hours.