I competed in the WorldSkills web design national final in 2010 and 2011. This would initially start as an internal competition in colleges, with the best website of each course level submitted to WorldSkills for selection in the national final.

In 2010, we had to compete in a barricaded arena in a Milton Keynes shopping mall, with the public walking around and talking. And the in 2011, the competition took place within Highbury College. The competition required a website to be constructed in around eight hours, including: documentation (site-maps, storyboards, page descriptions), Adobe Flash animations (with actionscript) and a website (with JavaScript, CSS and HTML conforming to XHTML 1.0 strict standards).

On my first attempt, in 2010, I came joint-third and received bronze. And then in 2011, I came first and received gold, with the website using PHP (as opposed to a static site the first time). I developed all of the CSS, JS, PHP and HTML in Notepad++, which had only syntax-highlighting (no auto-completion). I suspect this impressed the judges, especially since I finished around an hour or two early. We also had no access to internet for resources, so the development took place within a very limited amount of time, using purely what we had learned. The PHP was also not a requirement for my level, but I used it to have a global site layout, to make my life easier and reduce repetition.

Links

• https://www.eveningnews24.co.uk/news/22382875.city-college-norwich-students-take-gold-silver-national-competition/
  • Archived PDF - 2023-04-01 @ 21:57
• https://www.ccn.ac.uk/news/gold-and-silver-students-worldskills-uk-final
  • Appears link has stopped working (2023).