> apparent simplicity… but true brainteaser!
If you remember, I was talking about this project in my “Freelancer’s screen-shot” last month: “A SMB (ie. Small & Middle size Business) for whom I’m working on the creation of a brand new website since August. From logo and Favicon to navigation and page structure, I had to keep the original graphic charter (especially colors) and to give it a fresh, modern twist!“.
In this case the project remained in a sub-folder of the web-host for a while, waiting for my client to validate it in real conditions (= online) without allowing users to see it yet. When I realized the situation was frozen, I offered him to ascend the website in the root folder all the same so that it could finally replace the old one, saying that future improvements and additions specified in the agreement could be made later on when he has time to give me his directives. So this is kind of version 1.0, and it’s now ready to be shown:
Let me tell you I had to face annoying issues all along the development process – the main one being due to the navigation bar, nothing less. Indeed I first had designed it myself using only CSS (took me hours too!), and it was looking just perfect on all my web browsers… except under IE, where the menu appeared to be totally broken as a vertical list of items randomly placed at the upper-left corner of the page! It took me weeks (literally!) to figure this out, and I ended up using this “Free CSS Menu Maker” desktop app found at http://css3menu.com (exactly what I needed):
Then another important problem appeared after on-lining the website, when my client alerted me on a wrong display of the left-menu, only on 3 pages… This was all the more complicated as I couldn’t see the problem on my own devices… In the end I understood it was due to the fact my design was formed by a table (yeah, I know…), so I was finally able to fix it – whew!
To finish, my last big difficulty was to make the contact form work… damn PHP!! After trying several online free email form PHP generators (since my own one was no working at all…), tinkering pieces of code here and there and sending myself tons of test messages… well, it finally works fine – collecting data typed in by users in the different fields and sending it all to the chosen destination address!!
As you can see every project is a challenge for me, definitely… It’s not always easy being on my own with no one to provide me advice or help – most of the time all I can do is exploring forums looking for a solution, or even just for a hint to tell me what I’m doing wrong. But when, after spending lot of time racking my brain, everything falls into place I simply feel so good! That’s why I think I can be proud of what I do, even if the result can look quite basic to anyone from the outside. I’m learning everyday for sure, and I love it!
Give my work a look, visit website below:
> EVOGEST <
