Blog 7: Upgrading my Manual + An Introduction to App Development
James P -
Hello Everyone and welcome back to another blog! To recap, these past weeks have all been about actually building computers, buying and testing components as well as exploring different methods of computer building. This most recent week I finished off by benchmarking the 3 computers that I’ve built for this project. Now, after finishing that, my project from here will be taking a shift in focus. Imagine I’m now in the second phase of this project. The first 5 weeks were spent focusing on building these computers myself, so now these next 5 weeks will be spent focusing on how I can help others build computers, building all the tools and guides necessary. With that being said, what I achieved this week is relatively simple:
The first part of this week was spent adding on to my manual. My manual is going to be split into 3 parts: “Picking the components”, “Building your computer”, and “Customizing your computer”. Before this week, I had written the building your computer section as I built the paid computers a few weeks ago. So, this week I worked on the “Picking the components” section. In this section, I explained the basics of what each component does, describing them in a way without too many technical terms. I also delved into how to select the parts for your own computer including how to research the power of parts using online benchmark tests as well as using the eBay Web Scraper I made in a previous week. Finally, I talked about the different methods one could use to make it, those being the Linus or eBay method and I explained how to buy parts for either of those methods. Overall, I finished a rough guideline of how one might choose and buy the parts when it comes to building their own PC through my manual.
The second part of this week was spent getting started on making my app for this project. The purpose of this app is mainly to provide an alternative to my website. Many people wanting to build their own computer may only have a phone, so I wanted to make something completely accessible to those with limited technology. This app is also meant to serve as a tool since it also includes some unique things that I didn’t include on the website that works best with phones. Using FlutterFlow as a design tool, I created 5 pages for this app: “HomePage”, “PartListPage”, “ManualPage”, “ForumPage”, and “SupportPage”. Without going into too much detail into what each of these pages mean, they are used for specific things. For example, PartListPage is where one can store potential parts they are looking at and SupportPage is where my FAQ is as well as where one could talk to the AI for any questions they might have. A part of the pages is a sort of “pseudo” page: “ForumPage” while it is made, the function of it I want to leave open in case I find anything that I wanted to include before finishing this app. Actually, starting to create this app was really interesting because although I’ve created an app before, I’ve never gone this much in depth with the features and planning, so I’m really excited to keep working on this and see how the final product pans out.
By the end of this week, I ended up doing some relatively simple yet important things. I finished up the section of my manual that explained how to choose the parts you do when building a computer, and I got started with my app development, creating the 5 main pages that will be the focus point of the app. This week also marks the start of the second phase of my project, so I am very excited to continue down this path that actually helps others make their own computers. I’m not exactly sure what I’ve got planned for next week, so I guess you’ll just have to wait and see!
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