It’s about time that I give you an update on the progress of “Project Penguin”. This has been the site I’ve focussed nearly all of my attention on over the last few months and I’m pleased to say I’m closing in on completion!
Project Penguin is by far and away the most complex site I have developed for myself and has therefore taken up a vast amount of time. Since January 2012 I have been devoting as much time to it as possible when not doing university work, now that I’m done with my studies for the last week I’ve been able to work on it full time and plan to continue that way until I start my job on the 6th of June.
This 6th of June start date has forced/enabled me to set myself a deadline as once at work my pace of development is obviously going to slow right down and I want the site ready as soon as possible, so I’m saying it right now…. Project Penguin will be complete by 5th of June 2012, something tells me I may regret saying that!
The vast majority of the site is already complete, giving me the confidence to announce a deadline because I’ve already implemented nearly all of the background functionality required by the site. When starting the project the time this would take was a bit of an unknown quantity, although I’ve done a fair amount of web development and coding in the past I’ve never developed a project of this size from scratch before. This meant that I had to decide on how the site should function, how to implement this functionality and learn a few new techniques to make it a reality. Evidently not the easiest of things to predict, having said that I did originally say that the site will hopefully launch in May and I’m not going to be too far off (pats self on back).
Work left includes the creation of a couple more pages which require some serious thinking, including adding a bespoke user messaging system which shouldn’t be too horrendous, updates to the site design that I’ve been planning for a while, security tests and modification of content. After that a fair bit of testing and tweaks and it’s time to rock and roll (did I really just say that); exciting times!
So that’s where I am, I haven’t included many specifics on how I’ve built certain functionality (or even what it is for that matter) as I’m not planning on using this site isn’t here to teach you how to code. A cheeky Google will find you many great resources online if you’re interested in how to develop websites, many of which are far better than I could manage that I’ve probably used myself over the last few weeks. Once the site launches and I’ve had time to look down some other online avenues I’ll have far more to say in terms of tips and tricks for making money online derived from my experiences.
Thanks for sticking with me whilst I focus on this site, motivational comments always appreciated!
