In my January post, I discussed the new workflow I was developing for my project. Last year, I prioritized content while this year I am prioritizing technical infrastructure. So, how are things going after one month compared to last year? Perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising, but the answer is much better. 

So far, I’ve already managed to create the entire bootstrap framework for my website in Bootstrap Studio. I may change colors, fonts, and other elements of the site’s appearance later on in the process, but at this stage every part of the website exists and is navigable. I have finished the home page, about page, methods page, and narrative page. Even the modal is already in place, which is something I didn’t add until the last second with my previous project. Granted, there is still no content, but there is a place for the content to be easily inserted at a later date. Additionally, I have already created individual pages for each of the heritage sites that will be featured on the map. 

I have also already completed the map itself–newly created tiles have been added to my website (although, those may change if I change the overall color scheme of the website). I’ve inserted the coordinates for all the heritage sites, and I’m now working on creating layers. This is probably the first new skill I’m having to develop this time around, and it has slowed down my progress a bit. After almost two weeks of work, I think I have the layers themselves figured out. There will be a total of twelve layers–one for each guidebook–and numbered pins indicating the order they are referenced in that particular guidebook. Due to some sloppy coding and the pins being essentially in the same place on each layer, I was having trouble figuring things out at first. However, now I think I’m on the right track and am in the process of fixing the layers control. By my next post, I should have everything at least functional.

But, do things seem to be going better because I’ve essentially reversed the order of how I’m working on the project, or is it because I already have a year and a half of the fellowship under my belt this time? Honestly, it’s probably a bit of both. Last year I was so caught up in combing through the guidebooks and making a decision on how best I wanted to present that information that I ended up leaving all the technical elements to the very end of the fellowship year. The major reason the data was represented by word clouds is I did not leave myself enough time to explore other ways to convey it.

This year, I already have so much more to show for the short time span I’ve had to work on the project. However, I have several advantages–for one, I’m using Bootstrap Studio again, which took some time to learn last year. I also struggled with inserting my Leaflet map last time around, but that meant I knew exactly where to drop in the code this year. As I move further into the semester, there will be more new elements I need to work on so I have a feeling things might slow down even more. At least as of now, everything seems to be on the right track, and my project is (and will hopefully remain) word cloud free.