Need help from the ground up on Portfolio Project

I feel like I’m being gaslighted by this project. I’ve taken all the 122 tutorials leading to this project, but I have no idea what to do. I have no recollection of learning how to make a navbar, and when I look at other projects’ code, it is completely different than anything I’ve learned in the tutorials. I feel like I missed a chapter or two from a book, but when I go back and look at what I’ve already learned I see nothing that helps with this project. Can anyone speak to me like a child and help?

I just spent the last two hours trying to construct a navbar and when I add the Bootstrap 4 (and 3 sometimes) to the stylesheets in codepen’s CSS settings, it just goes pear-shaped.

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I feel your pain. I finished my tribute page a few months ago then got started on my portfolio and was suddenly lost. I looked at other work being submitted and it was nothing like any of the lessons I’d just finished so I got frustrated and quit trying. About two weeks ago I decided to try again with a different approach. I did the read-search-ask method and committed myself to finishing this project with only code that I understand no matter how long it takes. I hope to have my portfolio posted to codepen tomorrow and I’m proud to say I know what all of the code is doing even if I’m taking 12 lines of code to do what a more advanced coder is doing in 1 line.

The lessons here really are just “tip of the ice burg”, dig in to the rest of the internet for help I found W3Schools to be a big help. Also, make sure when you’re looking for help, your looking for the correct help. If you’re working with Bootstrap 3 and reading a help page from Bootstrap 4 it can really frustrate you.

I hope I helped a little. I was ready to give up but came back with a “I’ll do it my way” push and now I’m glad I did.

Good Luck Friend

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Jump on youtube and check out some basic tutorials. Learn from there and then try to build it yourself. FCC does throw you in the deep end pretty quickly, but to be honest, when you get a job as a developer you are literally thrown in the deep end each and every day.

It’s best to learn how to research and ask questions now, so that you can move faster in the future. No matter what level of proficiency you have as a web developer, you will always hit a wall and feel completely overwhelmed. But if you have a good method of reading, researching, asking, then you will go a long way to solving a problem quickly.

Just try to set really small milestones for yourself and savour the small wins along the way :slight_smile:

Good luck!

yea, im not sure what you meant by bootstrap 4 (and sometimes 3) - im guessing used the syntax for 3 thinking it was for 4 (or not knowing) - dont try and use both together is what im getting at. You guys aren’t alone thinking this - the projects you probly view (including the example) use things not taught up to that point. My advice is to try and make something simple and quick. You will want to go back and almost completely redo the portfolio after you get a little better and finish some more projects.

It is normal to feel overwhelmed when tackling the projects. The lessons on html/css are only a taste of what’s out there and what’s possible. It teaches you very basic skills. I think this is on purpose so that we get used to researching and learning new skills on our own.New frameworks come out frequently and so we will have to learn how to learn. My recommendation would be to take it piece by piece. Draw out what you want your page to look like and then break it down into chunks. Research one piece at a time and keep building until you get to the finished product. It is challenging but it is worth it. You can also reach out for help here. Share your code and let us know where you are stuck. Don’t quit. You can do it. It just takes time and patience.

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I understand how you feel! It was a bit of a hassle to figure out how and what to do. My design skills are horrible so I modeled my page after the example but built everything by my own knowledge and googling. here’s the link Portfolio Page If you’d like I could walk you through how I did everything. I’ll do my best to help out!

I think from the replies already you can guess that everyone feels much the same when they come up against the challenge.

A lot of the videos on the topic assume a level of understanding, which you indicate that you lack, or at least feel that you lack. Not to toot my own horn, but I’ve been putting together a playlist on doing this challenge from the perspective of an absolute (befuddled) beginner. It may, or may not, give you some ideas or confidence.

I’m as much a content creator as I am a developer (Bwahahaha), so I’ll apologise up front! Anyway, here’s the playlist link.

Hello! I am currently a software developer. I didn’t use FreeCodeCamp but I sometimes come and answer questions to help out - I like mentoring/helping.

I wouldn’t get too beat up about not having a portfolio website or not doing one as it really depends on what position or career path you’re trying to go for - it may not even be relevant. For example, for where I am at now we don’t even check for a portfolio website or request one, we request a Github and any work they’ve done (physical copies preferred). I would highly suggest worrying more about your social profile and Github than a portfolio website - they are nice to have but almost never get used to judge for hiring. I have hired at 3 different companies for this and not once did anyone on our hiring team even bother to really look at them.

To bring this back to your post. DO NOT feel ashamed to just go and Google code. Search for a navbar you like and then either try to build it yourself OR copy/paste the code and tinker with it. I can say this with justification - every programmer or developer out there Googles and uses code they find in Google searches at least a few times a week. There is no true way to knowing or understanding everything.

I do agree that Free Code Camp is a “tip in the iceberg” as there is so much more out there - but from what I can tell it is a work in progress and a code “get your feet wet” solution. I’m rather interested when they adopt Python personally - that’s what I am an expert in.

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Thank you, everyone. The pep talks are actually very helpful. I’m going to tackle it with the mentoring of a developer friend and see what happens. I’m finding the ‘throw out everything and do it your way’ method is working. I may hit some of you up, though, if I get stuck. Thank you all again.