Notes from October

In this post, I’m experimenting with a different format for my blog. Month notes are a format where I can share what I’ve been working on over the month and some of the things I’m learning. I’m hoping it will be useful for me to look back on as a learning diary and also for anyone wondering what the day-to-day life of an apprentice developer is like.

Photo by James Kemp on Unsplash

What I’ve been working on

• I’m finishing up my portfolio to submit for the apprenticeship assessment process. This will be a summary of all my work for my employer (Common Knowledge) so far. Read more about the software developer apprenticeship and how it’s delivered at Founders and Coders at https://www.foundersandcoders.com/apprenticeship
• I’ve started work on a redesigned WordPress website for Common Knowledge client The Architecture Lobby. We are still in the design phase of the project so I’ve been working on establishing the infrastructure like the GitHub repo, getting the site running smoothly locally, and setting up continuous integration

What I’ve been learning

Over the past month I’ve learnt how to:

• install Bedrock (a modern WordPress boilerplate) and add seed content from an existing theme
• use PhPMyAdmin and SQL to work with a WordPress database
• create custom post types in WordPress
• use the Carbon Fields plugin to create custom metadata fields on WordPress posts
• display custom metadata in WordPress template files
• use rsync to synchronize files between GitHub and a web host and how to automate this in a GitHub action for continuous integration

What’s next

Soon I’ll be:

• Discussing my portfolio with my apprenticeship assessor
• Building out The Architecture Lobby site based on Figma files from our co-op designer
• Starting discovery work on a WordPress upgrade for a book publisher and whether we can use WooCommerce integrated with ONIX to replace their existing solution
• Starting work on my final apprenticeship project - a redesign of the Common Knowledge website

Interesting links

These are some interesting links that I’ve come across this month:

• Run your GitHub Actions locally with this utility https://github.com/nektos/act
• Find out how big that npm package really is https://bundlephobia.com/
• Chris Coyier (from CSS Tricks) explains how the web is good now https://youtu.be/F18oy48jkrk
• Documentation for shell scripts 🐚 https://explainshell.com
• There’s a name for that illustration style you see everywhere! https://t-artmagazine.com/what-is-corporate-memphis-and-why-is-it-everywhere/