Selling My First Website!

Today was a day that I did not think I would experience for a long time. Today, I presented a well thought out, feedback driven website design to someone who didn't even know they wanted a new website. Today, I was someone who took a leap of faith and believed in my skills enough to at least have the confidence to try, and it paid off!

The back story here is a fairly simple one, one that was inspired by a similar story. The gym that I am a member of and go to (well will once they reopen in a week) had a boilerplate wix website. While not a terrible website, it lacked certain functionality and completely lacked responsiveness.

With this in mind, I saw my opportunity, I said to myself, I can improve this. I can make this website something the owner, and I could be proud of. All while battling internally with the fact that I am still very "green" or new to development as a whole, but also knowing that I have learned a lot since starting. I am confident in my HTML and CSS skills, especially because they are currently the only real development skills I have.

I fought off the impostor syndrome and pitched the idea, and we agreed to the terms and creation happened! The job was simple in a sense, a single page website using id tags to direct scroll when the corresponding link was clicked.

Nothing crazy, but I got started, used a mobile first approach, created a fixed bottom nav with the business logo for mobile, and a fixed top nav for tablets and up. I included the provided info, created telephone, email, and address links as well. I also got to put my link to my twitter in the footer to try and spread my work around hopefully!

I reached out to my friend Jack for some feedback, he provided me with some super valuable tips to adjust a few responsive issues, as well as a few HTML things I had overlooked. His help and feedback was invaluable.

I presented it to the client and they loved it! He was ecstatic, and the experience was incredible. He went from not even thinking about redoing his site, to having something responsive, clean, with a great call to action!

I was so excited, I had to share with the dev community! I put a snapshot of the site up, and I have to admit, I was a little nervous. The client loved the site, which is obviously the most important thing, but the dev community knows a lot more than the client. They understand the importance of a good UI/UX, accessibility, contrast, and a long list of other things.

Devin Ford 💻🚀

@devindford

Today for #100DaysOfCode I successfully sold my first website design!! I’m super thankful for @jackdomleo7 s feedback!!

Purely done in html/css and I’m so motivated!

It’s not live yet but here’s a mobile preview!

Fully responsive done with flexbox, basic but I’m so happy!

19:42 PM - 12 Jun 2020

Well the nerves were for nothing, because the reception of the dev community was amazing. While always super supportive and amazing, for me today was the first day I really felt apart of the community, and I was just amazed at how encouraging and uplifting everyone was.

For only being two months into this journey, this was an incredible checkbox to nail, and one I thought I was very far from.

Moral of the story, just go for it! Offer the job, the most you have to lose is someone telling you no thank you, and then you're where you already were, but if they say yes, it can be life changing!!

Please reach out to me here or on Twitter with any feedback or questions!