How Learning HTML/CSS Put my Pride Aside.

One month…that’s all it took…to have a better idea of how to use CSS and HTML to design my portfolio website. It was not easy and I am very much still a beginner but the small accomplishments I have made have given me the confidence to continue.

Before this experience, I would automatically go to my husband and ask him to fix it and make it do what I want. However, I also did not have my own website to take care of at that point.

Now that being said I did try to learn HTML and CSS on my own and spent hours researching but I did ask my husband when I just could not figure out the next step. Out of all the resources he ended up being the best one I had because he was there with me in person and could walk me through the steps. He also taught me things along the way that I did not get from my research, such as, the difference between class and div. I know that it would have been harder to learn HTML/CSS without him and I realize that I was lucky to have that resource because I probably would have given up on my goal of trying to learn this new material very early on.

My plan going into this professional development activity was to share resources between classmates who were also attempting to learn HTML/CSS. There were resources that had explanations of what you needed to type out as code to create your vision. There were classes and courses that would go over the basics. I thought I would take a few courses, learn a few basics, and be able to create some tweaks to the current theme I was using. However, the first time I used HTML was to embed my instructional design digital story on my about me page and center it. I was able to do this all on my own withing the page and I outline it in my third blog post, “Lets. Embed. That.Video.”

Throughout this journey, I created a website that I am proud of. It still needs a ton of work to get it up to my own standards but I have made great strides with a theme that allows me to modify what I need. I have embedded a video, changes the size of my blog post feature images so they do not dominate the page, and fixed my main navigation menu to the top of the page which was a compromise.

At the end of this post, I will also be adding embedding a screencast where I go through the process of adding a Google slide presentation to my portfolio page.

The one piece of advice I want to give to anyone learning something new, don’t be too proud to ask for help. The one thing I don’t mention above when asking my husband for help is how long it took me to admit I needed help. I have always prided myself on doing things on my own and figuring it out on my own eventually. But why? What is that proving?

I have learned so much throughout this process and it was not just how to design pieces of my website through HTML and CSS. It was learning to accept help, to network with others, and in the end, comprise is the key to success.

As Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, “Knowledge is when you learn something new every day.”

So embrace the journey each new day brings.

Lastly, as promised, adding a Google Slide Presentation to my Portfolio page: