APT4910 : INTERNSHIP REPORT

Instructor: PROF. DALTON NDIRANGU

Student Name: ALI SUMAYA MOHAMUD

Student ID Number: 645772

Contents
Declaration of original work ......................................................................................................................... 2
Dedication ..................................................................................................................................................... 3
Acknowledgement ........................................................................................................................................ 4
Abstract. ........................................................................................................................................................ 5
INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................................................. 6
Click interactive ......................................................................................................................................... 6
DESCRIPTION OF WORK CARRIED OUT ......................................................................................................... 7
Understanding the basics of web site creation ........................................................................................ 7
Being able to create a web site ................................................................................................................. 8
Being able to publish and regularly update information on the web site ................................................ 8
DISCUSSING THE EXPERIENCES LEARNED ................................................................................................... 11
Challenges ................................................................................................................................................... 12
How I overcome the challenges .................................................................................................................. 13
Conclusion. .................................................................................................................................................. 13
Recommendations ...................................................................................................................................... 13
Declaration of original work
I, the undersigned might want to pronounce that this documentation contains my unique work

that does not involve any unreferenced materials. This work has not been submitted to some

other school, foundation or college for scholarly credit separated from United States

International University – Africa.

Dedication
I dedicate my work to my co-workers. They have really helped me to gain the skills that I need in

the IT field and especially how we interacted with them during this period of three months. It

was also a pleasure meeting them and I know that in the future we will help each other in many

other projects.
Acknowledgement
First I would like to thank Mr. Mohammed Birik for giving me the opportunity to do an

internship at Click Interactive. Although quite short, for me this was a great experience I can

learn from. It helped me to explore my skills and increased my interest in web development.

Special thanks to Mr. Joseph Gathuru for being so accommodating and understanding.

I would also like to thank the staff at Click Interactive for helping me during my mobility period.

I appreciate their patience and help.

I am tremendously grateful to my family and companions for constantly reassuring and testing

me to point higher.
Abstract.
As part of my bachelor’s degree completion, I was required to do an internship at an organization

of my choice. I chose to be Click Interactive, which is a digital media Company. I was able to

complete 400 plus internship hours at Click Interactive, for a period of 3 months. I intend to

share my experiences in this report, at Click Interactive, for the period of January 7th to April 6th.

During this period, my role, responsibilities and obligations at the organization were to work

with the workshop team and also learn a lot in Web Development. In this report, I have shared

my experiences and challenges together with the recommendations, I have, for Click Interactive.
INTRODUCTION
Click interactive
Click interactive is a new startup company which was started in December 2017 by Mr.

Mohammed Brik and Joseph Gathru as a digital media company which offer services such as

websites development, digital media marketing for clients and they also do professional

photography. At my time at click interactive I mainly focused on the website development of

part of the company which has taught me a lot of things and I also have gained a lot of new

experiences. The journey wasn’t that simple. There were many obstacles, new technologies that I

have to handle with, yet after overcoming each challenge I had discovered a new potential within

myself. The skills that I have gathered are priceless to me and I cannot wait to apply those in the

upcoming semesters. In addition to that, some of the non-technical skills that I have procured,

combined with those technical skills will certainly prove handy in my future jobs.

Click interactive also offers other services including:

Creative Content: create imagery that moves on your screen, that’s cool. We go the extra mile

by creating content that moves masses and stir souls

Platforms: Their processes varies from project to project, whether we’re sketching down ideas

on scraps of paper or mocking up wireframe prototypes, we adapt to work in the most.

Event Management: They manage brands such as music bands whereby they promote them on

social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, Twitter etc they also make the tour plans

for the bands.

DESCRIPTION OF WORK CARRIED OUT
The internship was mainly focused on web site development implementation and

management and targeted three main objectives:

 To understand the basic principles governing the creation of a site;

 To be able to create a simple web site;

 To develop the capacity to publish and regularly update information on the web site.

Understanding the basics of web site creation

The first objective was the introduction of the basic principles behind the creation of a

web site. To this respect, the course presented various aspects including the overall goals

of creating a site, namely: publishing data, marketing the institution, publishing

information pertaining to statistics domain. More specifically, the workshop covered:

 How to create an efficient web site;

 What should be the content of the site?

 How files should be organized.

Being able to create a web site
The second objective of the training dealt with a step by step learning of web site

creation, namely: introduction to technologies used on the internet and the uploading of

information.

 How does a site work?

 Description of tools used on the web;

 Introduction to HTML;

 Composing and uploading pages to the site.

Being able to publish and regularly update information on the web site
This last objective of the workshop aimed at teaching participants how to publish

(upload) and regularly update the information found on their web site. Three key aspects

were covered in the course:

 Hosting of the web site;

 Uploading files to the web site;

 Importance of updating data regularly on the web site.

1. The main rules governing the elaboration of a site have been studied. These are

guidelines to create a pleasant site in which information is easily found. Amongst

these rules are:

 Paying attention to the layout by using pleasant colors, light graphics elements;

 Always showing the user his position within the site;

 Paying attention to the “weight” of pages to minimize download time;

  Favoring usability and navigability of the site.

2. The importance of site contents was stressed. It is essential to properly and carefully

define the type and the amount of information the site will offer. It will be distributed

in a menu tree with a logic that must be carefully defined so users can easily find the

information they need. Adequate planning must be done before starting any work on

pages. The storage area for files should also reflect this logical organization to allow

for an easy update process of the site.

3. Basic technologies used on the internet were explained. The dialog between a client

computer and the web server was detailed. Protocols and languages used were

presented:

 File transfers (ftp);

 Requests for web pages (http);

 Web pages format (html).

4. Html language was presented and its main elements described. This language is made

of tags that describe internet pages. These pages are plain text files with no specific

formatting. Tags are then interpreted by the web browser to render on the screen the

display of the page as intended by the creator.

5. Internet pages can hold graphics. These elements can be obtained from picture

libraries on the internet, but also from digital pictures or from personal creations of

the developer. Many formats exist to save these files, but only a few are widely used

on web pages:

 JPEG for digitized images because of the loss of small visual information due to

the very nature of this type of compression;

  GIF for drawings (logos, sketches) and graphs (statistics) due to the small number

of colors available in this format;

 PNG, similar to GIF, but gaining popularity on the web.

These images can be created and/or processed using specialized tools. One of them is

Gimp an Open Source software, introduced in the workshop. Amongst its numerous

functionalities, this tool allows working with layers that is stacking individual simple

images to compose the overall final image. The main advantage of this technique is to

be able to work on one item of the image independently from the others.

6. Authoring tools have been created to hide the complexity of web page creation. NVU

and Sublime3 were introduced. It allows creating, editing underlying html code and

previewing web pages either from existing templates or from scratch.

Practical work was conducted on individual sites and gave an opportunity to test

different solutions to some problems, especially regarding page layout and browsers.

Tables were used to define areas on the page in which elements are placed, but this

requires replicating this structure in every single page of the site. A practical work on

creating a website from scratch. I worked on two websites templates. The first

template was based on the use of tables, unordered lists, Cascading Style Sheets

(CSS) and javascripts. The second one used only CSS and javascripts. I worked to

adapt the templates to their contexts and needs.

Web sites so created have been transferred to the host’s web server, created on

purpose to show the process of uploading files. FTP protocol is used for this purpose

and is implemented through client software. Several exist on the internet, and the one

introduced in the workshop was FileZilla, again a free software. Its setup is simple,
 and an account must be created afterwards to connect to the server. Parameters

(address, login ID, password and account name) are given by the hosting company (or

the provider). Once connected, the user interface allows transferring files by drag and

drop from the local computer 5 to the remote server so the web site becomes available

to the public. A simulation was made on a local web server. An important aspect was

pointed out regarding the home page file name. It is essential that it be standardised as

servers are looking for default filenames in the site’s root directory when no page

name is given in the web browser. These default names are often index.htm or

default.htm. If no such file is found at the site’s root, the browser will display the files

list as if we were using the windows explorer.

DISCUSSING THE EXPERIENCES LEARNED

I’ve been exposed to so much in my internship, from the initial design of front-end interfaces

through word press and PSD files, to building complex database queries with more than four

joins, to using version control within a team environment, to micro-managing my own projects

and conforming to deadlines. Everything that I got exposed to has helped advance my career,

knowledge and skillset in some way or another. I began the internship having only University

and freelance project experience, but six months in an agency with developers, designers and a

manager has taught me so much, across such a broad spectrum of things. With a broad

foundation of knowledge across multiple areas of software development, I now know that I can

specialize in a certain area and still be able to work with someone who specializes in another

area. For example, having designed some websites using word press for a particular interface in

my internship, I now know that in any amount of years, if I’m building an interface myself, I can
talk to a designer about the Word press themes and design behind it. Not only does this improve

communication between teams and individuals, but it also results in an increased development of

whatever it is that is being built.

A key piece of advice I’d give to any interns, or anyone that is starting out in Web development

is to gain exposure to as much as possible. Even if you don’t see yourself going into that area in

the future, or even if you don’t particularly enjoy that specific area; learn and experience it. It

may even give you the edge over other candidates in a job application. You’re young, so try to

see it all, and try to fill your head with as much knowledge as you possibly can, an internship

only lasts so long, so make the most of it.

An internship is hard, especially when it’s your first. But stick with it, it’ll all be worth it.

Challenges
At first, my colleagues were using technical terms that I had never come across, I kept

wondering ‘what are they referring to?’ In addition to that, I had no prior practical knowledge on

some of the tasks that I had to perform.

I also had to learn new languages such as php, javascript and html5 and I really found it

challenging todeal with the language, but I worked really hard to ensure that my work was

presentable despite the challenges I was facing.

How I overcome the challenges
To overcome the challenges I encountered, I always used to enquire from friends, colleagues,

lecturers, Google and watched YouTube videos. This helped me a lot and I learnt a lot of things

that I had no prior knowledge of. I also learnt by looking at what are doing, paying attention,

Learning from whatever I could and grasping whatever I can. It also helped or rather gave me an

Idea of how the work life could be, and how to proceed with such an environment. This was a

Glimpse to the work life ahead, and I can I am ready for it.

Conclusion.
The internship program has been a very enlightening experience for me as an individual. It

would be beneficial to all students if the internship course would be done more than once. This

will equip students with more work experience and would enable them to identify their areas of

Interest in the technological field.

Recommendations
I wish to say that Click Interactive is a very good and favorable environment full of new web

development technologies practical aspect that are essential with modern digital technology. The

place is well organized and suitable for trainees who are willing to learn.

I would highly advice a student to undergo the program and they will not regret because you

Learn so much.