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Group members: this is the place for your learning diary. Use this to post your zipped-up site at least once each unit, and your reflections as often as you wish (at least once per unit). Please write your reflections directly in the post, not as attached files. Where you do need to attach documents, such as for unit 1 designs, use PDF, PNG or JPG formats. You can attach files using the 'Embed content' link in the editor.
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Unit 0 Intro and Learning Diary
Hello everyone, my name Zakaria and you can call me Zack. I am 35 years old and live in Alberta. I'm taking this course because it seems interesting and also any programmer should at least know how to make websites I believe. As I was looking for elective course list for specialization on the AU website I found this course was an elective course for students who want to specialize in web-based system development. I have done some HTML before, it was fun and easy to learn and was fun to see my work on a web page (this was years ago). I am excited to learn the real stuff that you can use to create a website the way you wanted it to be. I am pointing this out because a couple of years ago I needed a website where my wife can sell her beauty products, so I used a service that let create websites easily. The problem I faced was how to rank the website according to some keywords, but using a third party service made the job difficult because you can only use the options they provide you with. Now, it's time to learn these techniques and apply them.
I started comp 266 this July, and I started by scanning through all units and what we expect to find in it. Then I started reading unit 0 and I've found lots of information that needs to be read and it felt like reading from a papyrus. Then I started all over again but this time I took my time and followed instructions step by step. And if the text says to do a,b,c then d that's how I did it. And it worked. And this is what I’ve accomplished so far from this unit:
- Read the orientation file and followed instructions step by step
- Took unit 0 self-test
- Contacted the landing support to setup my web space
- Got the response about my web space the next day
- Downloaded the required files, PuTTY and WinSCP programs
- Tried the programs and connected to my web space
- Changed my password to my account
- Created my first PHP file and downloaded it to the server
- Connected to my database
- Used what I have learned from my previous course comp 325 (UNIX)
- Logged in to the landing website
- Set up my account and edited my profile
- Browsed and tried to get an understanding of how the landing is structured
- Still learning as I go
- Read some interesting posts
- Watched the introduction video
The challenge that I think I’m going have in this course is the process of keeping a history of my progress in the learning journey. But, I already had a conversation with myself and decided to keep my journal as simple because simple is what makes people interested in things.
COMP 266
Comments
Hi Zakaria! Good advice. There is a lot to read through, and taking your time through each step seems to be the right way to go. I'm officially starting the course in August, but I thought I come scan the requirements ahead of time.
I'm also predicting difficulties with keeping a journal. This will be my first time doing so, and the task seems daunting. I, like you, will keep it simple.
Good luck with the course!