The Herptionary: a Guide to all things Herps

WE HAVE A LOGO!!!!

Not much else to note; been working on trying to get a basic API up and running and failing miserably, which is what the time is. I did try to track the two hours I spent working on this logo but lapse broke - twice - so that’s gone out the window. But. Frog book :)

(To the one dude in the slack who said the snake was cooler: yes, but it looks TERRIBLE vectored lol)

Devlog 4: WE’RE ON THE WEB!!!

The Herptionary is officially online! And formatted properly!

What I did:

• Redid my file organizaton so Cloudflare would recognize it as an actual site

• Put it on Cloudflare

• Fixed a bunch of issues, including the footer being stuck to the top of the screen on the dictionary and the header not being a header.

What’s next:

• Build an API for all the herp terms I want to add

• Vector my logo (to be revealed next devlog!)

• Write the Reptiles landing page

Herptionary Devlog 3: simplified, but at what cost

So, instead of building 26 letter-based pages and crying over file organization, I bit the bullet and found a tutorial on how to make the site access an API and retrieve a definition from somewhere else (thank you codingartistweb.com).

The formatting is still off, but now that I am actually using a CSS stylesheet I should only have to do this once and then all my pages should be formatted properly.

I am hoping that building an API from scratch does not require me to work with a fourth coding language, especially since I will have to eventually build three of them (one for the dictionary itself, and one each for reptile and amphibian searches), but for testing purposes I am currently using a free online dictionary API thing that came with the tutorial. It doesn’t have all the terms I am planning on including, so I can’t keep it that and skip building an API, but it is funny to search swear words while I am making sure that I didn’t break it while reformatting my site.

I love my tadpole stage website :)

Herptionary Devlog 2

So I had to redo my file organization TWICE to get it to work and make sense but I HAVE PAGE NAVIGATION WORKING!!!

What I Did:

• Added several home and landing pages, including the Dictionary Home Page and an About Us page
• Linked (and re-linked) images to the site for proper display of visual data
• Set up page navigation, including a functioning link in the header (to be replaced with an image)
• Cried over file organization
• BUTTONS!!! I HAVE BUTTONS AND THEY WORK!!!

Next Steps:

• Build the main Dictionary pages (…oh. 26 letter pages ALONE. I may have bitten off more than I can chew guys)
• Figure out how to make a wiki-esque edit system to make expanding the site to multiple people a LOT easier when I need help actually filling in the dictionary
• Ask if I can count graphic design time as hours spent on this project before I learn a new vector design system
• Develop a wiki-esque source system so I don’t have to link every single ^# credit by hand

Herptionary Devlog 1

So I happen to be an aspiring herpetologist (amphibian and reptile scientist). Much to my annoyance, some guy in the 1200s decided my favorite creatures in the world were “monsterous” and grouped them together, and now everyone is afraid of them. So, I’m gonna put my other interest to work and fix that!

What I did:

• Set up the workspace, hackatime, etc. for my first true coding project
• Made my first few (VERY basic) pages in HTML.
• Made bug/error/incorrect info reporting google form for when I do get this on the web.

Next Steps:

• Figure out how to link pages
• Find hosting stuff
• Graphic Design?

(Screenshot attached: a quick build of my homepage)