Category: My Journey to Build a Website

Mrs Physics has an ally! Over several years she’s got quite used to doing her own thing, but the new generation are yapping at her heels. With one eye to going boating and ignoring the state of the world, she has passed the rights to the National 4 part of mrsphysics.co.uk to the new kid on the block, as Mrs Physics has a new colleague.

It is exciting to work with a new young, enthusiastic Physics teacher, (although I really wish she didn’t share my initials!) and I am sure that very soon she’ll be teaching me everything I need to know.

It is an odd feeling, handing over your baby, but it’s important to share things if you want them to improve.

Welcome on board Physics Joule!

Whippee, after a few false starts with Tablepress and a lovely email from Tobias Bäthge, the creator of TablePress, I finally managed to get the width of the tables right so that you can read the headings and values. The Gas Laws results in the N5 section Properties of Matter is now accessible and I’ve deleted the preformatted tables. I still don’t know if it works as well as it could, but at least it is an improvement on what was there before, which was totally illegible.

Maybe I need to start being content with functional, rather than trying to get things just perfect. Then I might be able to spend more time doing the gardening and looking after the house.

I wonder what your distractions are, and whether you justify your distractions as hard work, thus putting off other important tasks.

I think I really ought to be happy with what I’ve done and go and get a cover for the air gap in the eaves before the bats move in again! That would be a whole new level of distraction.

Tablepress, better than a bench press and more tasteful to the eye

As if 4 days at Standardisation isn’t enough, I sadly decided to spend the evening finally learning how to put neat tables into a website. The ultimate guru for this is Mr  Mackenzie who holds the “National Collection for SQA Papers“. I’d got as far as downloading Tablepress but hadn’t done anything more than that.

Several posts currently have tables and they look shocking. I am quite embarrassed by them, so sort to do something about them. I’ve got something in my continual professional development about making things look better but as I am unlikely to get out for a course I thought I’d self taught. Over the last three months I thought I’d be able to bend the ear of Mr Mackenzie, but although we are at Standardisation together, with the rest of the team, there isn’t much time for a tutorial. So off I went to the next best place, the internet. Now I looked at several ideas but the following link gave me a start Web Monkey gave me a start, but I must admit I got bored of waiting after the super heroes got to the fourth line.

So I decided to have a play with the SQA SG Past Papers and Marking Instructions. J Boyle, had kindly offered these files to me, and I hope that she doesn’t mind me uploading them. Although these are excellent as a resource for National 4 and 5, if a student manages to complete them all they deserve to do well in their National 5 exam.

It was over 2 hours of work. I uploaded an excel table to get the basics in and then had a play about. I am not sure if I’ve learnt the correct way to add a link but adding insert image appears to open the media library and I can upload the files. I’ve found it is easier to add all the files into one box rather than cut and paste them individually from the library. I even got to move the boxes, although again I think I might have taken a circuitous route to do this: I added a column, duplicated a column and then deleted the column that was empty and the original one, then I found the drag and drop function. I hope I can learn how to custom the column widths.

Hopefully over the next few months I can change all the tables and make them look quite presentable. I hope they look good on a mobile phone too. Now I am going back to my hotel room and am going to sleep- can you believe the 8 a.m. early start and late nights we will be doing.

Thanks to everyone who helped!

Oh every time I think I’ve cracked this wesbite stuff things go wrong again. Kids, learn from this. Find out how something works before you try to use it!

I’d got my About Me page, all set up and I was quite pleased and thought that I could leave it indefinitely. It looked ok, I’d put links in from each section and Callum had made a front book that was a direct link to the post.

The other day I posted  a new post on “usefullinks” and it appears this has removed my page on About Me. Now I still haven’t got my head around the difference between a page and a post. I can do a static front page and it fills up the whole page and doesn’t do columns so looks nicer, but why does any page, other than the front page vanish into the ether?

I am sure I will read up on it, at which point I will have to go through every section again and change the link! Oh dear, this really is taking up a lot of my time and no one but me is reading it anyway.

Time for bed, should have had my SAD light today and more tea. I’d feel so much better.

Oh boy, now I am really really confused. It appears I didn’t need to change the custom link in each section as it found it automatically. Explain that one! Why is it a link can detect the About Me, even when it has changed from a page to a category? Oh well it is working now so I am going to go to bad and hope it still works in the evening.

Still waiting for someone to offer to tutor me on Building a Website, I’ll teach them AH Physics in return!

The very kind Steven Simpson from the Royal Society gave me some advice about the site- thank you. It will never be up to his standard but I did get a few bits of advice.
I have added an ABOUT ME page as a custom link for each section and a BACK TO HOME page. Both are custom links from pages on the site. As I don’t have access to the front page I can’t place a link where it really needs to go. Well I’ll work on it.

What I really need to find out is how to wrap the header and menus as they are looking quite untidy in some of the pages. Any advice warmly welcome. At least repeating for 9 pages gives you plenty of practise at remembering how to create things.

Must go, Christmas starts here!

This is my neighbour.
Locked up on the Scottish canals. Mostly Harmless is very Harmless as we can’t go anywhere until we get some important repairs done. That’s three new batteries and the shower to fix. I’m quite content though as I get to catch up with my Higher, Nat 5 and BGE notes. The boat is only six feet ten inches across and fifty-six feet long, so even I can keep it tidy. Anyway over the last week I’ve managed to work the website through my phone as I’ve no internet connection from my computer. The first time I tried using my phone I managed to delete most of my post, so was grateful that it stores all my previous versions. Over this week I’ve managed to create new categories, upload finished notes and make and adapt posts, all on my phone. I think I’m getting the basics, but I wish I’d got the hang of my new glasses as I really can’t see very much. Good night, time for Mostly Harmless to be closed up for the night.

Haven’t seen the swans and seven cygnets tonight. It’s obviously the lettuce, which might be good for them but they certainly won’t eat it.

Here they are, very fickle, left within one minute of the food being gone. Lots of hissing, but didn’t sound threatening. Not that I risked it!

Good evening,

As the snores start above I suddenly wondered if anyone had read any of this website and blog! I believe there is a way of counting visitors but I haven’t found it yet. Someone let me know that you’re out there.  Hope you’re relaxed and chilled. I am still trying to put the Heat topic resources together and then start on Higher and N5- oh to go boating!

Did my first bit of code today to get my gravitar to show at the bottom of a post, hopefully like this one! Building a website can give you loads of satisfaction as well as frustration.