Projects
I pride myself in always trying to learn new skills through various jobs and side projects. These are projects that I have done and some of the skills that I learned or improved with each one.
The Jungle Times
As a student at Auburn University, when I'm not in class or at work, I love Auburn athletic events and Auburn Basketball is by far my favorite. I was the author of the physical copy of a student section newspaper called "The Jungle Times" during my sophomore year. The summer before my junior year I decided that I wanted to make "The Jungle Times" digital as well. The main goal was to learn a back end language and how to set up a database backed content management system, more specifically a blog, while getting the opportunity to start my own venture to spread my knowledge of a sport I love. Upon completing the project, I have decided that PHP might not have been the best language to use as opposed to Ruby on Rails or any JavaScript framework, but the site functions for what I need it to do and overall I am proud of what I was able to build from scratch in just a few weeks to meet my self-set deadline. You can follow along with Auburn Basketball news as well as the development progress of the site at www.aujungletimes.com.
Skills learned: PHP, MySQL, Bootstrap CSS, Bootstrap JavaScript, Digital Media, SEO, Monetization
War Eagle BEST Website
In the same way that my job is to update and run my office's South's BEST website, I am also in charge of the very similar War Eagle BEST website. While the original War Eagle BEST website was not as behind as the original South's BEST website, I still thought that I should take the time to totally redo this site as well for mostly the same reasons as the South's BEST site. I implemented the War Eagle BEST site with the Bootstrap framework as well for quick updates and easy maintenance in the future when I have to pass the sites on to another student after I graduate. The War Eagle BEST page intentionally has a very similar design to the South's BEST website due to the programs being under the same umbrella and War Eagle BEST even being a feeder competition for South's BEST. With the War Eagle BEST website I also got to use a few more of the tools and items built into Bootstrap. You can find out more about War Eagle BEST and check out my current design at www.wareaglebest.org.
Skills learned: HTML, Bootstrap CSS, Bootstrap JavaScript
South's BEST Website
One of the many tasks that I have while working for the College of Sciences and Mathematics Outreach Office at Auburn University is to keep our websites up to date for our various events. The majority of our events are all held in one web page that is limited by a very basic CMS, but the websites for both of our BEST Robotics competitions are completely open for me to work on freely. The South's BEST Regional Robotics Championship is the bigger of the two competitions and is easily one of our biggest events that our office hosts. In my first few years working for Outreach, I was comfortable making simple updates to the sites. Eventually I got tired of the very old, non-responsive design of the South's BEST site in particular. During the summer before my junior year I finally had the opportunity to completely redo the website. Because I knew that I would have to eventually pass this site along to another student worker when I graduated and that there is no guarantee that they will have the web skills that I have, I decided to style with site with Bootstrap to make it easy to pick up from me later. You can find out more about South's BEST and check out my current design at www.southsbest.org.
Skills learned: HTML, Bootstrap CSS
Auburn Disc Golf
Before I started really becoming interested in Web Development, my first programming passion was Android Development. I was attracted early on by the almost free and open entry into Android Development as opposed to iOS even though iOS was far more popular at the time. I have been a pretty hardcore Android supporter since. While I never found the time to become a good enough programmer in Android, I did manage to make one application that I still use quite often and overall am decently proud of. Auburn University's campus has a disc golf course made out of certain "landmarks" around the campus. For the longest time, my friends and I would just use a PDF that someone had on their phone that wasn't much help. So I decided I would make an Android Application to not only keep a digital layout of the course, but to also keep scores for multiple players. This was also the first time I was exposed to SQLLite by myself and really databases in general. While SQL was different than the Excel that I was used to, I quickly realized the usefulness that it had in programming and other projects. If you're ever in Auburn and want to play the disc golf course or just want to check out my application, you can download Auburn Disc Golf on the Google Play Store.
Skills learned: Java, Android Development, SQLLite, Mobile Advertising/Revenue