So, through providence, or luck, or a smattering of both, this summer I came to work at our local party store here in Fairbanks, Party Palace. It's really our only party store here in town, in a place that really needs it. We sell balloons, regular and balloon animal, specializing in balloon bouquets for nearly any occasion you can think of. We also have a fantastic selection of party supplies, costumes, and more accessories than you could shake a VERY large stick at.
So one day, I decided to look at the website, as I'd heard a customer mention they'd looked for something on the web site and couldn't find it. Being an IT major, with an emphasis in Web Design and Administration, I figured I'd check it out and see if I could help them out.
This is what I found.
I went and found the owner/manager and asked her if she would have any problem with me giving the site a much needed overhaul, and her response was "I've been waiting for someone to ask me that!" With her blessing, I spoke to my adviser at UAF, Keith Swarner, and we figured out that not only could I help Party Palace out, but I can use it as my Independent Project for my degree. A win/win you might say.
So there you have it. Expect to see a lot more posts as this project gets going for real, and I start making some real progress. I'll be posting most of what I do to my own website so I can tweak it all before we add it to the live Party Palace site, and I'll add links to it here, so you can peek in on my progress.
Angelesa Ward
So a few months ago, I posted this picture of how the Party Palace website looked when I found it.
This... is now. A lot of formatting behind the scenes, and it doesn't look like it, hehe. The CSS is perfect, and I have a week off work to get some hardcore coding time in. I contacted the provider today, and now have an upload URL and a username and password, so as I get things finished, I can actually start uploading them. I'm excited!
