Zachary Martin's Portfolio

View My CIS515 Projects

I'm Zach Martin, and I'm diving into web development to build a skill I've wanted for a long time. I've done bits of programming and technical tinkering on my own, but the part users actually see and interact with the front end, the design, the way everything connects has always been the piece I wanted to really understand. That's what brought me to this class.

Learning web development feels like putting together two halves of the same picture. I want to understand how a front end, a server, and a database fit together end to end, and how to turn raw data into a clean, responsive interface someone can actually use. Full-stack work is what interests me most: not just styling a page, but knowing what's happening underneath it.

My goal this semester is to get hands-on and build something real instead of working through abstract exercises. For my project, I'm creating a full-stack portfolio site for my own small business, Galaxy Forge Gaming, an LLC I run selling trading cards. Building something I actually care about should make the concepts stick a lot better, and I'll come out of it with a site I can genuinely use.

I learn best by doing, breaking things, and figuring out why they broke. I'm looking forward to leveling up as a developer this semester, getting comfortable across the whole stack, and seeing what everyone else builds along the way.

About This Portfolio

This website is my portfolio for CIS515, and it is the foundation that everything else I build in this course will grow from. Its purpose is to collect my projects, assignments, and experiments in one place so that anyone, whether that is my instructor, a classmate, or a future employer, can see what I have built and how my skills have developed over the semester. Instead of a folder of separate files on my computer, this site gives my work a real home on the web, with a consistent layout, working navigation, and pages that connect to each other the way a professional site should. Each part of the site reflects something I learned along the way. The first version was plain HTML, where I focused on structure, headings, links, images, tables, and forms. After that I added my own CSS, which taught me how selectors, the box model, colors, and fonts work together to turn a bare page into something that looks intentional. Now I am rebuilding the layout with Bootstrap, which shows me how professional developers use a framework to make a site responsive on phones, tablets, and desktops without writing every rule by hand. Later in the course I will add JavaScript to make the site interactive, and eventually connect it to a server and a database. The CIS515 Projects link on this page leads to my homework page, where each assignment is listed, including my semester project for Galaxy Forge Gaming. Because the site changes as I learn, it works as a record of my progress. Looking back at earlier versions makes it easy to see how far I have come, and looking ahead keeps me focused on the full-stack skills I want to have by the end of the course. This portfolio is a work in progress, and that is exactly the point.

Theme: Default