vlad-404 / photo-portfolio

Welcome to my photo portfolio page. As this will be a place where I'm constantly adding new images and improving the site experience, after you visit it, please come back soon

Photo portfolio

Welcome to my photos portfolio page! Here you will be able to see some of my work I gathered over time and during my travels. I welcome you to make your self comfortable, enjoy the images and if you like some of them, why not consider a purchase?

Contents:

• UX (user experience)
  • Idea
  • Research and preparations
  • Wireframes
  • User stories
  • Design choices
    • Fonts
    • Colours
    • Icons
• Features
• Features left to implement
• Technologies used
• Testing
  • Bugs during development
  • User stories Testing
• Deployment
  • Emails
• Credits
  • Content
  • Acknowledgments and thank you's
• Disclaimer

UX

Idea

The idea behind this project was to present the pictures I gathered over time and during my travels. I was always fascinated by the mutual relationships of different spaces, colours and how they all work together, especially in nature. This is why most of my pictures are about nature. My other interest is gaming where this fascination with space and colours didn't get ignored.

As my collection of pictures was increasing, I decided to use it and make a portfolio website where I can possibly profit out of a static resource which are images. That is why I set up a web site with portfolio of my work which can serve as an online shop.

As this is only for educational purposes, I will not be charging for the images or sending them out just yet, and if someone tries to buy something, Stripe payment system won't let them untill I activate my account.

The scope of this project will be localized on just the images I made. Making this site to be a platform where I can make my living of, is not in the scope of this project, but it's open to the possibility.

I chose to make this project because of the following:

• I love to travel
• I like making photos
• I can make some profit out of it
• I can see which of my pictures are more desirable so I can improve on my photography and editing skills
• it gives me exposure

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Research and preparations

Idea for this website came to me while I was talking to a fellow student and I saw this as a viable topic. When I saw his project, I liked it and started looking online for some inspirations to see how difficult will this be considering my skills and timeframe I had.

After going through photo portfolio pages, I found one which served as an inspiration for my project: Nate Luebbe.

Going through all of these portfolio pages, I noticed that all of them some things in common:

• minimalistic design
• very few colours used which made photos stand out
• name of the owner on the initial page
• very little text, mostly for navigation
• some of the best effects I found on the internet in regards to presentation

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Wireframes

After the initial idea, I decided to make a couple of sketches and make wireframes for different platforms to have an idea of how the page will look like on different platforms. Software used for generating mockups was Balsamiq. You can find all the wireframes in the wireframes folder.

After finishing the project, some of the design and features were changed:

• I removed the ability for users to rate the images due to time constrains
• Image purchase is now available to everyone instead of just registered users
• Image upload app is now part of the image_presentation app
• basket has been renamed to cart for better assotiation with shopping
• Different image sizes were removed from purchasing a it took too much time to implement
• Removed the ability to purchase the same item from order history
• I added a separate page instead of full page modal where visitors and users can see an image accross the full page and decide about their purchase; And some minor UI changes. If you want to know more, scroll down to Features Left to Implement.

User stories

As a user:

1. As a new visitor to the page, I want to be able to find a nice landscape image to put in my living room
2. As a new visitor to the page, I want to be able to purchase images and get them delivered to my house
3. As a customer, I want to be able to chose different sizes for the images
4. As a recruiter, I want to see Vladimir's work and decide whether to hire him or not

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5. I want to be able to display my work publicly so I can get exposure
6. I want to be able to add, remove and edit the images
7. I want to be able to see the address where I should send the printed image if purchase has been made
8. I want to be able to see which images are most popular so I can make more similar ones

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Design Choices

Based on the research I made browsing through some other photo portfolio pages, I decided to continue my approach from previous projects and that is making it simple and easy to navigate.

From this, I decided on the following:

• minimalism with very few colours so images can stand out and be the focus of the site
• the UI needs to be easy to navigate; each part of the page has to be easily acessible.
• uniform and appealing look
• put more focus on design - css transitions and JS effects are much more represented than on previous projects
• grayish font colours instead of solid black (or more pronounced shadow effects if black colour used)
• as image heavy page, I will be using Cloudinary API and their widget for more image controll instead of simple upload

For styling the page Bootstrap library was used.

Fonts

The following fonts were chosen:

• For page name:
  • Black Ops One goes with Open Sans and Roboto
• For amost of the site:
  • Montserrat for most of the page as it fits well with...
• For all of the form and smaller text:
  • Open Sans for forms, descriptions, sub-menu and small text

Colours

Colours used: Most of the colours are brought down to a minimum. Grayish colours were used for navigation butons, navbars, footer while elements that have site wide impact used bootstrap colours(info, primary, danger,...)

Colours	Hex	Bootstrap value	Used in
gray	#5a6268	element-secondary	nav buttons, navbars, rules, message backgrounds
gray	#5F5F5F90	none	navbars, and everywhere I needed transparency
blue	#0275d8	element-primary	messages
teal	#5bc0de	element-info	messages from cart, infos, free delivery info, edit and update buttons
yellow	#fff3cd	element-warning	free delivery info
red	#c82333	element-danger	buttons for deleting, checkbox and text in image upload form, error messages in forms, messages

Icons

Icons were used from a FontAwesome page.

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Features

As per the initial idea, UI has to have a uniform and appealing look, be easy and intuitive to navigate. For this reason, multi-page concept was implemented. Thanks to Django, I used apps to cut down on repetitive tasks like creating everything from ground up.

As per research and design choices, I decided on these the following features:

• minimalistic design
• initial page with transparent header for navigation. Scrolling down reveals cards that stretch accross the screen and lead to a respective category
• search bar
• ability to sort the images by category, price and rating
• page dedicated to a single photo where people can read about it in more detail
• CRUD functionality: owner can Create, Read, Update and Delete content he created; users can see history of their purchases and rate the images
• super user account and one admin account which will be dedicated to me (for security reasons)
• Users can create and delete their account
• Image hosting will be handled by a third-party provider - Cloudinary as current storage capacities aren't adequate for a large number of images.

Features Left to Implement

The following features were left for future implementaions:

• Different image sizes with respective prices - printing a small image is not the same as printing a large panorama image. Adding different price for different size required more coding and as a beginner with Django, I didn't had time to add relation between size and price while purchasing.
• Rating system - it took too long to implement
• Adding category and social links - it can be added through the admin console, but adding them through the site UI was left out
• Sorting within a selected category in image gallery - while it is an integral part of the page, it doesn't have a significant impact on page functionality, so it was left out untill future implementations. Current functionality only supports sorting of all images.
• Removing own profile - this can be done in Django admin console but, due to time limitations, this feature was left out. Since it doesn't have a significant impact to site functionality it was left for future implementaions.

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Technologies Used

Languages

• HTML5
• CSS3
• JavaScript
• JSON
• Python

Tools, frameworks and librarys

• Django
• Stripe
• JQuerry
• Jinja2 2.11.2
• Cloudinary 1.21.0
• Git
• Bootstrap
• Google fonts
• Font Awesome
• Heroku
• GitHub
• Balsamiq
• VS Code
• W3C Markup
• W3C CSS
• jshint

for more details and dependencies, please refer to requirements.txt file

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Testing

Browser and Device Testing on Heroku page

Other than some long initial loading times on deployed Heroku page on majority of devices, following platforms were tested:

Browser	Device	Compatibility	Version
Google Chrome	PC	Excellent	Version 87.0.4280.88 (Official Build) (64-bit) (x64)
Opera	PC	Excellent	Version 73.0.3856.284(x64)
Google Chrome	OnePlus 3t	Mostly inteface issues with small tap surfaces; fixed	Version 87.0.4280.101
Opera Touch	OnePlus 3t	Mostly inteface issues with small tap surfaces; fixed	Version 2.8.4
Safari	iPad Mini	Excellent	Version iPadOS 14.03

Testing per device

( ✔️ = pass, ❌ = failed)

Test	Google Chrome(PC)	Opera(PC)	Opera Touch(mobile)	Safari(iPad mini)
Test links to all pages	✔️	✔️	✔️	✔️
Try to access the user area without signing in	✔️	✔️	✔️	✔️
Test search	✔️	✔️	✔️	✔️
Test messages	✔️	✔️	✔️	✔️
Test filtering	✔️	✔️	✔️	✔️
Test link to contact form outside home page	✔️	✔️	✔️	✔️
Test photo info page	✔️	✔️	✔️	✔️
Test hide sidebar	✔️	✔️	✔️	✔️
Test adjusting the quantity for purchase in image view	✔️	✔️	✔️	✔️
Test adding to cart	✔️	✔️	✔️	✔️
Test update cart quantity	✔️	✔️	✔️	✔️
Test remove from cart	✔️	✔️	✔️	✔️
Test adding to cart	✔️	✔️	✔️	✔️
Test purchase form	✔️	✔️	✔️	✔️
Purchase form - wrong form field entry	✔️	✔️	✔️	✔️
Purchase form - wrong payment details	✔️	✔️	✔️	✔️
Purchase form - save info for future purchases	✔️	✔️	✔️	✔️
Purchase form - webhooks by monitoring Stripe dashboard	✔️	✔️	✔️	✔️
Purchase form - interrupted payment process	✔️	✔️	✔️	✔️
Test update default delivery info saving	✔️	✔️	✔️	✔️
Test account registration	✔️	✔️	✔️	✔️
Test email registration	✔️	✔️	✔️	✔️
Test login	✔️	✔️	✔️	✔️
Test logout	✔️	✔️	✔️	✔️
Test add new image	✔️	✔️	✔️	✔️
Test modify image	✔️	✔️	✔️	✔️
Test delete image	✔️	✔️	✔️	✔️
Test edit/remove image buttons displaying for different types of accounts	✔️	✔️	✔️	✔️
Test reject access to admin pages if user is not admin	✔️	✔️	✔️	✔️
Test filling the contact form on home page	✔️	✔️	✔️	✔️
Test sending contact request mails	✔️	✔️	✔️	✔️
Test sending purchase confirmation email	✔️	✔️	✔️	✔️

During testing, these errors were found:

• Removing an item from cart manually resulted in 500 error. See bug#019
• Home link in header-navbar.html sometimes ends up under cart icon on small number of screen sizes and only if there was something in the cart. Left unresolved as it affects a very small number of cases and is not a major bug

Testing with validation services

W3C markup validation returned The aria-labelledby attribute must point to an element in the same document errors. Reason for this might be use of template logic and conditions that are required for some if statements to work. There was an empty header error as well but it wasn't consisent. I disregarded this error as it didn't had any impact on the site.

The W3C CSS Validation Service returned no errors for css files.

User Stories Testing

As a user:

1. As a new visitor to the page, I want to be able to find a nice landscape image to put in my living room
   • any new visitor to the page is greeted with an image that stretches accross the whole screen. From there, visitor can either use the nav bar on the top, click on the arrow on the botom or just scroll.
2. As a new visitor to the page, I want to be able to purchase images and get them delivered to my house.
   • during each purchase, user is asked to fill in a form with his full address so the image can be delivered to him.
3. As a customer, I want to be able to chose different sizes for the images
   • as above, during the purchase, user can select which size he wants: S, M or L. Each size has dimensions in mm so the user has an idea of how big a delivered image will be.
4. As a recruiter, I want to see Vladimir's work and decide whether to hire him or not
   • All of the best images are displayed on this web page, and everyone can sort them by category, panorama or not, colour or black/white, name, rating, price and top rated. This will make the recruiter's job much easier.

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5. I want to be able to display my work publicly so I can get exposure
   • all images will be hosted on Heroku where they will have exposure to everyone on the internet, accessible 24 hours a day - every day.
6. I want to be able to add, remove and edit the images
   • thanks to forms and Cloudinary, images can be easily uploaded, manipulated and deleted.
7. I want to be able to see the address where I should send the printed image if purchase has been made
   • users won't be able to complete their purchase if the address is missing. This is where the image should be sent.
8. I want to be able to see which images are most popular so I can make more similar ones
   • thanks to the rating system, Since there is no rating system as of writing this readme, popularity of the images can be assessed by how many images has been purchased.

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Bugs during development

As every project, this one had them too. Instead of making a long list in the readme, I moved bugs to a separate file which you can find here.

Deployment

The repository for this project is hosted on GitHub and uses Heroku to serve the site to the world wide web. If you would like to contribute to this project you will need to have online code editor like Gitpod or local such as VS Code. Also you will need some version control software like Git. For Git, you will also need a GitHub account.

Prerequisites

In order to contribute to this repository, you will need to have the following installed:

For online editor:

• Python 3.8.3 or higher
• Git version control
• Code editor - Gitpod or VS Code are recommended
• Account on GitHub for version controll

Development

There are a number of steps required to deploy a local version of this project.

Local copy

1. At the top of the repository click on the Code button and select Download zip
2. Copy the path to the repo "https://github.com/Vlad-404/#"
3. Navigate to where you would like to save this file on your system
4. Start VS Code and set up virtual environment by following instructions here: https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/python/tutorial-django
5. Open the saved file with VS Code
6. Install all the dependencies by typing in the terminal: pip3 install -r requirements.txt Depending on your operating system you will have to adjust the command, but as long as -r requirements.txt is there, all dependencies will install.
7. If you add or update any new packages to the project use pip freeze > requirements.txt to update the requirements.txt file with the new dependencies.
8. Create your own Github repository and connect to it if you want to use Github for version controll

Environment Variables

You will need to setup the following environment variables on your system:

Variable name	Used for	Notes
SECRET_KEY	Session Variables	This is a unique secret used for cookie encryption, you can use any random string for this
DATABASE_URL	Default database	Database used for this project is postgress
STRIPE_PUBLIC_KEY	Your stripe public key	Found in your Stripe account dashboard under Developers / API Keys
STRIPE_SECRET_KEY	Your stripe secret key	Found in your Stripe account dashboard under Developers / API Keys
STRIPE_WH_KEY	Your stripe secret webhook key	Found in your Stripe account dashboard after you create a webhook
CLOUDINARY_CLOUD_NAME	Cloudinary Image package	Found in your Cloudinary account dashboard
CLOUDINARY_API	Cloudinary Image package	Found in your Clouinary account dashboard
CLOUDINARY_SECRET	Cloudinary Image package	Found in your Clouinary account dashboard
EMAIL_HOST_USER	Mail distribution	This the email address where emails will be sent from
EMAIL_HOST_PASS	Mail distribution	App password for Gmail

Note: you will need to add these environment variable to your GitHub repo in "env.py" and Heroku in "settings -> config vars"

Warning: Do not expose these variables anywhere on your site as they pose a serious security risk

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Deployment

For deployment I used Heroku hosting services.

The easiest way to deploy the project to Heroku is to set your connect method to GitHub and link the repository master branch. If you set the project up for automatic deploys, it will deploy once the master branch is updated.

My photo portfolio site was developed on GitPod and VS code, using GitHub and Heroku to host the repository. Heroku was used because GitHub pages cannot host dynamic pages.

When deploying photo portfolio using Heroku, the following steps were taken:

Linking the Heroku and GitHub:

• Log in to Heroku and GitHub
• Make sure you have admin privileges on GitHub
• Go to Heroku and select photo-portfolio app
• Click on Deploy and in Deployment method, select GitHub(Connect to GitHub)
• Select repository to connect to
• Enter repo name in the empty field and click on search. Be sure your repo exists on GitHub and that you typed it in correctly.
• When repo shows click on "Connect"
• Your Heroku app will be synchronised each time you "git push"
• Set up your environmental variables in Settings / Reveal Config Vars
• Website is now live on Heroku. To run the site, click on "Open App" at the top

If GitHub asks you to authorize the Heroku app in any of the steps above, do so, and you will be able to do an automated deployment from GitHub to Heroku.

Emails

Email distribution service I used was gmail. If you want to use it too, this is the set up:

1. Login to your Gmail
2. Navigate to your Google account settings
3. Select Security and add 2 step verification
4. Navigate back to the the page in step 3 and select App passwords
5. Create app password and copy it to your environmental variable named EMAIL_HOST_PASS

The site is set up so you only need to add EMAIL_HOST_PASS and EMAIL_HOST_USER in your environment. If you don't want to use Gmail, please reffer to your email providers documentation.

Credits

Content

All of the images were made by me. I used various cameras to capture the images. Even if I was carefull not to include any logos, business names or faces, if you find any copyright or privacy issues, please contact me on [email protected] and please explain the situation. I will be glad to answer and work out the issues presented.

Acknowledgments and Thank You's

• Big thanks to Nate Luebbe whos page served as an inspiration to my project. You can find his page here: Nate Luebbe
• Sidenav for mobile devices used from w3schools: https://www.w3schools.com/howto/howto_js_sidenav.asp
• Display for image cards in gallery was used from bootstrapious.com as free resource.
• Code from quantity_input_script.html for + and - buttons in image preview used from Chris Zielinski from Code Institute and most of the checkout app
• YouTube user Majin Dev and his video on instructions how to set up Cloudinary in Django
• Chris Zielinski and the whole team at Code Institute whos lessons and videos on Boutique Ado helped me materialise this project.

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Disclaimer

This page was built for educational purposes and all resources were used under fair usage and/or under free licence! All of the images are Vladimir Mijatovic's ownership. If you find any content that violates the copyrights or your privacy, please contact me on [email protected]

Thank you for visiting my page and I hope you'll have fun browsing through my images as I did making them.

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