300 Word Website/Project Evaluation

The most demanding aspect in the creation of We Are Awesome, was to turn the idea of improving humankind, into something that could work online. This idea, was inspired by my own reservations on the inequality that has manifested itself among civilisation as it continues to progress. To realistically achieve this with a website, required constant re-evaluation and a leap of faith. This initial idea envisioned and worked towards, was met beyond my hypothetical expectations.

Numerous challenges were faced in achievement, particularly the design of the website and the content offered. The final layout of the website is concise and sleek, which was ensured that it would visually appeal, if the premise of the website were not to. The content created had to be inventive, as the website is purely conceptual; it needed to educate, enthuse and inspire – it confidently accomplishes this.

It is debatable if a true understanding of website skills can be derived from the creation of one, when you are necessitated by your module to create one. It was only when I initially used Notepad to experiment, did some confidence amass with the creation process and a better understanding of HTML and CSS and its relevant  tags became discernible, where it was possible to comprehend the task at hand and use Dreamweaver efficiently . Put simply, without tutorials online, the website would not have been possible.

Little of the website requires improvement, but the banner and logo could have been implemented better. Many problems were encountered with the coding of the website, which included the constant incorrect application of syntax, troubles in implementing animations and at times, an envisioned page structure, which only tutorials could fix. The next time, it would be interesting to not rely on tutorials as much, to have a greater appreciation of coding.

Word Count: 300

Finalising the Website for Submission

The website as it stands, is pretty much complete but needs some minor adjustments and demanding implementations before it is submitted.

For one, the content for all my content pages - for the "Political Analysis, "Entertainment" and "Media" pages - are all now finished and require that they simply be fitted into their relevant pages. Having done this many times before, and having pretty much structured the pages in anticipation for the content once complete, this was a matter of simply using the img tag to link the pictures from the images folder from within my site root folder into an image size previously established for the webpage, and also the <p> tag to input my headline underneath the image.

Styling the content: Difficult at first to structure it to my requirements 

What was problematic however, was ensuring that the images - or content through the images and text - on the "Home Page"  was structured to my specifications. It was difficult to get the structure of my content to look presentable and streamlined on the page and it took a while playing around with the sizing of the table width and cell padding attributes to get it to layout that I was happy with. This process was repeated across all content pages and after a few hours, my finished content was implemented onto my web pages.

Got there eventually: Page structure as envisioned

I was faced with a difficult choice with what to do with my banner. Having created one that I was happy with in Photoshop, when it came down for inclusion across We Are Awesome, it did not look like it belonged on the website.

This was down to the different type font used for the banner, not to mention the red background colour used as well. I believe two of the type fonts used heavily on the website are Aliquam and Bebas Neue and it just did not mesh well with the banner's type font. At this point, I am happy to have even got as far as I have with this website and survived the six hours it took to make the banner in the first place. Therefore, I have decided not to include my Photoshop created banner and use a text title, which I feel looks much better on the website, than the banner did.

Also, with the look of the website, I wanted to implement a visually stimulating characteristic within it to make the appearance of it, more engaging for an audience. Therefore, I decided that I would implement an animation into my background to fulfill this premise. Looking at tutorials online and W3 Schools as well, it appeared that this would be burdensome to achieve purely if I were to code it myself; so therefore, I took the easy way out and downloaded a template from Modernizr, a website offering templates to use and whacked that into Dreamweaver. The only thing that I had to do with the template was to specify the images that would link to the revolving background and cite the timing of it.

JavaScript template for the animated background

As briefly discussed in a previous post, the easiest way to input video into a website would be through the use of Youtube. All it would require is the YouTube URL to the video and details of the box size that would be displayed on the page with the use of the iframe tag, for video to become a reality on a webpage. And it really is that simple.

Easy as 1-2-3: Embedding the video into HTML and styling it with CSS

With this feature added into the web page, this brings the We Are Awesome project to an end. I must say that looking at my website I am extremely happy with it, but also surprised as well. I never thought that this was achievable when the project began, nor that this would be achievable once it ended. It just goes to show that whatever you put you put your mind to, you will succeed with the task at hand, not to mention the inner awesomeness you will find within yourself, to accomplish the impossible along the way.

We Are Awesome finished: Just awesome