Building with Invision Community is satisfying - January reflections

In the last month I have been working on this site to try to figure out how to build things properly.I have made some adjustments to colors, built a brand new header and finally got the graphics I need to get content flowing.  It has been some ups and some downs, but overall I feel pretty good about the way the site is coming together.

Maybe the biggest change that happened in January was a shift in mindset. Going from always strive for perfection to good enough with the possibility to improve, really meant a lot.  The other thing that really made a huge difference is getting PhpStorm and starting to code for real. Sitting in a proper IDE and do code, there is no feeling like it and I really, really missed it.

Getting a ton of graphics also did matter a lot. That is because now I have the graphics needed to build the page heroes so I can start to feel a bit productive again. It also give me a ton of new graphics to use for articles and blog posts and it inspire me quite a bit to be honest. Great artwork always have that effect and not that I have a whole lot of new vectors to play with I have so many options while still being able to keep the site consistent.

January was also a shitty month when it comes to stress and that affected things quite a bit. A work related issue really frustrated me and cost a ton of energy. My son is also having issues with school and live in general which takes a lot of time and make me worry of course. Fortunately he is an amazing person and I am constantly amazed over how mature he is despite his situation. So I have mixed worry and stress with a sense of pride and amazement, which has not really done wonders for my state of mind in January. Still, it's being handled and I feel a whole less stressed these last few days.

Using Jira for Backlog management

In theory this works great, but in reality I have been to lazy to use it properly. In February I will take it a bit more serious and I aim to do one story from the Epic "JWSE Website" every weekend as a minimum. I am also going to start my blog series on how to use Jira for site management, so the workflows will be updated a bit with a proper workflow. My highest priority right now is to add a home navigation for areas that are "generic". This includes things like Policies like Privacy Policy and an About This Site page where you will learn more about this site. These are being created slowly.

Adding content headers to all sections

This is what I am currently working on. The problem I am trying to solve is to how I will get this consistent across the site. For pages it's easy. Just drop in a component in the widget area and you are done. For databases I have to split out the templates for each database. That way I can add a component in the front page only and keep the data entries without a component. I may also try to add a section for each category, but that require some additional work with some if queries so it's not really a priority.

The biggest issue I have right now is the application specific sections. While each application have their index file it is already added to the content wrapper. This makes it impossible to break out to be a full width container. The option will be to add a bunch of targets in the templates or if I can add it to the blocks themselves. I am trying to figure this out, but it should be possible even if it may not be a super clean solution.

The other issue is that I have the CSS added in a separate file and there is no good way to add that to the applications. I might just lift this into the overall CSS since it's not a whole lot of CSS and I will add it to pretty much all pages anyway. Another option is to include it inside the block itself, but I do not like the idea of inline CSS. We'll see how I figure it out in the end.

Recreating the projects database

The projects database is going to be a focus area in February. in January I started the remake by adding content that follow the same format as the CV's we have at Zington. So besides adding the content I will also add new banners for each project using the new standard where the site icon is colored based on the area it is connected to.

I also started to add some people from the People database so as I recreate the projects I will also list the people I currently have added. The ones not yet added I will see if I can add to the database. Not everyone will be added of course, but a few selected ones would be nice.

I also want to connect the databases a bit better. Right now I just pull in the author image using the standard Invision Community template for profile. This I want to change a bit so I can link to the page in Awesome People rather than the user profile for the site.

So January was a bit of trial and error, but things are slowly improving. I just need to focus on building content and not to try to get people in here to interact. It is for me I build this after all and if someone else like it, then great. I will not stress about it however.

Just have fun and always strive for progress and not perfection.