In a moment of inspiration combined perfectly with procrastination, I have decided to start a personal web page. This will be a place for me to explore and experiment, to try stuff out, and to talk “out loud” about those experiences. I was heartily inspired by Matthias Ott’s post on the perks personal website.
So far, all I’ve done is install WordPress. Something I’ve done many, many times. But this is my first official time using WordPress blocks (aka Gutenberg aka WordPress 5+?). The new WordPress. Just WordPress by this point I guess.
For someone with several years’ experience setting up, administering, configuring, and maintaining WordPress sites, it’s still almost all the same. But I’ll admit, I was slow off the mark to play around in the new back end UI. But in my defence, I’ve been a little insanely busy the past couple of years…
So I guess a bit about me:
I currently work as a software developer for a small SaaS company, where we build our products on the Salesforce platform. I’ve been here for around 2.5 years, and while it was an adjustment coming from WordPress to Salesforce, I’ve also really learned so much about data structuring, software architecture and app design, that I’m really looking forward to being back in the open-source realm, but now with more Knowledge.
Before my current role, I worked on websites as a side-gig of my previous career. WordPress and the community around it, as well as other free code learning resources online really lead me to wanting to go into this whole software thing full-time. I tried doing the self-taught route, but on top of an intense full-time job, it just wasn’t working for me.
I ended up attending RED Academy‘s 12 week web developer program in the spring of 2016. In those 12 weeks, I learned more than I ever could have imagined. We learned basic front-end web stuff (HTML, CSS, JS), we learned how to develop WordPress themes and plugins, and we learned how to build a basic React single-page app. Plus we built a webpage for a community partner. If you’re not sure, that’s a lot in 12 weeks!
But I think more importantly (and more long-lasting) than the specifics of what we learned, I learned how to figure stuff out. How to experiment, how to read the docs, how to ask questions, and how to work through a problem.
And it’s those skills that have really helped me in growing and expanding in my career. I went from a front-end web developer hired on a 4 month contract to an intermediate full-stack software developer in less than 2 years. I don’t know if that’s unusual or special or anything worth really bragging about, but I do know that I worked hard for it. And I also know that I have a lot to learn still.
So, hence, the purpose of this page. I really do love my full-time job. But at the same time, I am feeling more and more separated from what’s happening in the web development world. We work with what works with our product, for our clients, and with Salesforce technologies. I feel more and more that it’s important to me to have a way to explore and express myself beyond that.
So this website is where it’s all going to happen. Today, it’s just a blog on a very plain theme. Next steps, I want to try playing around with wprig.io for theme development, and I’m going to figure out how to load an SSL certificate onto my domain. Pretty basic stuff, but having an up-to-date build process and a domain that supports https are things that will help me going forward.
What to expect from this site:
- honest ramblings about my processes
- Star Trek references
- inconsistent posting schedule
- changing my mind about what to work on next
I’d love to have anyone and everyone along for the ride. You can follow me on twitter @sarakgiven or maybe by the time you see this, I’ll have a way for you to just subscribe to this blog….