Looking back to when I first started I probably should have spent more time choosing and researching themes. I was so focused on finding one that had in particular elements that would work well for my site take the embedded video player for example, it made me forget about other things such as plugins that are mentioned on the brief, I just assumed they would work with the site I had chosen.
This is where things became very frustrating for me, because I chose a one page site this then limited me to not having seperate pages which I was aware of but I wasn't aware that the majority of my plugins wouldn't work without pages, sadly once I had figured this out it was too late to change my theme instead I have had to find different ways/ loop holes around these problems.
Loop holes
The brief said our websites require a shop, a shop plugin requires pages which I am limited to, having said this when I install the plugin it works and when I preview the shop it appears this was a good sign to me that the shop is existing somewhere, though when I try to view the shop page within my website as a normal user the link in the navigation bar is inactive nothing happens. I thought if my page is showing within a preview page I'll just copy the link from that and add it to the navigation and this seemed to do the trick. The shop works as it should, the check out section works with built in PayPal.
The same thing happened when I tried to add a booking system so I did the exact same thing and used the preview URL and this now works too. The calendar is within the booking system.
I struggled and tried everything to get the map on the homepage or a page of it's own, The lightbox map does work but this only appeared on my shop page which made no sense, I made the decision to leave the map on the shop page because i've come to the conclusion that it is better than nothing.
I struggled and tried everything to get the map on the homepage or a page of it's own, The lightbox map does work but this only appeared on my shop page which made no sense, I made the decision to leave the map on the shop page because i've come to the conclusion that it is better than nothing.
I decided to leave SEO and analytics until last because it makes sense to build the website first then focus on it. I did find learning about SEO very interesting because it's all about getting hits on your website and making sure your website link is appearing number 1-3 within search engines, I can take this information I have learnt about SEO and apply it to other website projects in the future. I already knew a lot about analytics through my own online work, this way i found it easy to link to google.
Couldn't get working
the search bar is another frustrating plugin that I can't seem to get working on my home page, though I don't think my website necessarily needs a search bar as everything is pretty self explanatory and easy to find also my user testing backs this.
