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General Discussion

Posted by Joshua Steffan
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Joshua Steffan
Front End Web Development Techdegree Student 9,010 Points

Practicing my newfound skills?

Im not sure where the best place to ask this is but I figured the treehouse community is a start. So I have ran through the "How to build a Website" track and Ive also started learning a bit about Javascript and Jquery as well. My question is I want to practice these skills some how and Im not entirely sure how to go about it? My Initial thoughts are to just create various fictional websites just to practise different aspects of the languages I learned but I'm wondering if anyone else has this problem as well or if anyone has suggestions or thoughts?

Michael Newman
Michael Newman
39,508 Points

I've actually just written my first blog post of my entire life on pretty much this exact subject. This site will eventually live on a different url and I wasn't planning on posting it, but maybe it will help you (and anyone else viewing this question) out.

http://mikeronewman.github.io/html/blogpost.html

2 Answers

Billy Bellchambers
Billy Bellchambers
21,689 Points
Billy Bellchambers
Billy Bellchambers
21,689 Points

Creating content is one way to practise your skills.

Another idea I have seen thrown around is to try a replicate other sites.

Find a site you like and try to recreate it using your own code from scratch can be a neat way to practise your new found skills.

Especially useful for trying new things and layouts you might not have thought to use planning a design yourself.

Simple thing is to keep working with what you've learn.

Another way is yo get inspiration from places like codepen and github.

Hope these suggestions help.

Happy coding.

Michael Newman
Michael Newman
39,508 Points
Michael Newman
Michael Newman
39,508 Points

When you first start, building absolutely anything will be challenging and help to grow your skills. Building fun little projects for yourself (fictional-websites, a personal blog page, just a section of book with some responsive typography on it) are easy things to do at first. As soon as you feel comfortable reach out to friends and family that may need a website for their business or blog, or find a local business, church, or non-profit that may need one and offer your services. Put whatever you can on github or a personal website and keep going. If you keep pushing yourself slightly (not so hard that you don't finish the project) your skills will be constantly growing. Hope this helps, I'm honestly in a similar situation myself, but I'm happy about where I am compared to three months ago, and I'm going to keep on working.

The above user has wonderful points as well.

Keep up the awesome work!

john larson
john larson
16,594 Points

Michael, I took a look at your blog...very nice. I added it to my bookmarks so I can go back to it for inspiration when I'm stuck. I especially liked the minimalist feel of the white background and 3d kind of effect for the header. :D