There are many aspects to websites a developer must focus on to create the best product for themselves or their client. I really enjoyed having the opportunity to make a personal website that showcased who I am instead of previous projects when I would make sites for others.
Rather than using a template, I chose to challenge myself by coding from scratch in Brackets, the software I have used in the past (although BBEdit is very helpful as well). I started with my homepage and added my navigation links. Once I was comfortable with the skeleton of my index, I moved on to the linked webpages including “about” and “poetry.” When I would experience a challenge, I always referenced W3C; it’s a very helpful resource. Images were honestly the most tedious to handle because I have been accustomed to sizing them within HTML instead of having them properly sized via Photoshop prior to adding it to my site. It took no more than 10 minutes to resize all my massive images to something more usable, and once I applied it to my website it was much easier than having to change the sizing in my code. I like to keep my goals realistic, so I am actually really happy with how my website looks because it was just what I had in mind on top of adding a fun message with a button coded with JavaScript. Had I been an expert in code, I would have loved to have a fading introductory message before users went on the site to add some drama to the whole experience. It would have been really fun to add floating images that bounced from the margins, too. I was thinking about transparent images of possums because they’re my favorite animal. I wasn’t sure if I needed to use JavaScript or if it was possible through CSS to bring that idea to fruition, but after some time I decided to polish what I already had. I wanted to take a minimalistic approach to my website because I find it to be more enjoyable compared to a busy, chaotic webpage. Repetition is important as I make a website, and I find the best way to implement cohesiveness in a site is with a set font and color scheme. While coloring the text, I knew the font had to be black because I initially intended to have a colorful background so it would be easier to read. I added a white shadow to the header text and the text on the homepage to make it stand out. Alignment was another design strategy I wanted to really focus on as everything is aligned in the center bringing all the content in full view for the user. I struggled with proximity because, although I still have my content near each other, I wanted their to be enough padding in between each element so it wouldn’t get too crowded on the page. The linguistic mode is conveyed as I use very casual language in lowercase on my website to represent how I live—more so attempt to live—in a relaxed state as well as driving home that I am a 19-year-old girl in the digital age. I used the visual mode to showcase who I am as well as what I find to be aesthetically pleasing. The four photographs on my homepage bring me joy and I hope they intrigue the audience. My picture in the “about” page has hues of blue and is a recognizable image of me to show users who I am along with information about me. I used a color scheme of cotton candy colors: light blue, lavender, and light pink, which are seen as a gradient in the background of all the internal links on my website. Not only are these my favorite colors, but I hope to bring a calming atmosphere with my colors. Overall, I really enjoyed myself during this process and learned that there is more to a website than just a layout and color scheme. There are rhetorical devices that are used to provide users with an optimal experience online, and I hope I effectively implemented them in my own introductory site for my audience to appreciate.
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