Dustin Varnell

During the semester, the thing I feel I benefited most from was learning more about HTML, CSS, and PHP because they are things I am more likely to use compared to JavaScript. I wasn’t too excited about the JavaScript actually, it seemed kind of boring or tedious to me, though I know thats just part of some things. The textbook was pretty good I guess, the fact that I was able to get it on the ebook format allowed me to read it from my tablet without having to open the book past the first page, which was nice.

The content of the course seemed pretty good in terms of coverage, I can’t think of anything I wish we had gone over. Maybe a little more work with HTML/CSS/PHP, but that may just be me. I’ll use what I’ve learned in managing my own site more, as well as other sites I am planning to create, though I don’t think I’d do it as a profession. I’d actually like to trim down my employer’s site, because its a little too large for what it needs to do.

As for outside resources, I thought that w3schools.com had very good content, I found myself using it quite a bit just because it is online and easily accessible.

My final project was a success, I think. It went from something basic to a still basic, yet more functional and complete website. I’ll continue to work on it because I don’t see any reason not to, and it comes with a cool email address, not to mention it could help me out in other ways some day.

For the class format… I will admit I missed several assignments because I am not used to having things due almost every day, especially from a once a week class. I think that the workload itself was alright, just maybe have two to four days per week where things are due, rather than up to six days. If it were me, I’d pick the monday and Tuesday to move to Wednesday or Thursday, it always seemed like I would miss those day’s assignments more than others.

Overall, great class, great professor, glad I took it.

For my task 6, I created a simple logo in photoshop and uploaded it to the header of my site.

Check it here

First of all, I’d like to address Will’s presentation. It was to the point, and he described what he went through in order to get the site like it is today. I completely understand the frustration of having things deleted, I ran into that once before and ever since then I’ve made copies of my backups just in case. Its just not something people anticipate I think. He was using a plugin called  comicpress, which seems like it works pretty well. Its something I might check out for my own site eventually.

Jim’s presentation was good because it pretty much outlined the premise behind his idea while also showing the website, and didn’t go into too much detail at the same time (Good thing in my opinion, let the users discover the site.) He also brought up the Instagram photos, which I’m honestly not a huge fan of but if it works, then by all means.

Another presentation which I thought was really good was Eric’s. The idea behind his project is great. Its kind of like something I wish I had when I transferred here in 2010. It looks like his photos on the front page were a little off dimension wise, they seem stretched a little bit. But anyway, his presentation was well prepared and showed good initiative to get this project into a real usable application.

Self criticism time! I’m terrible at presenting, there are things I wanted to bring up in my presentation and I had it all planned out but I forgot to mention Google Analytics and how it tied into my social media sharing function. Once I implemented my social media sharing, I saw about a 10-20 user jump, which I consider to be rather huge since I only have about 150 people on my Facebook and 200 on Twitter.

I think is it difficult to call any kind of social network a general community without realizing that there is a network, then there is a community. I would call Facebook a community, where Twitter would be a network. The community would be more of interactions and responses, which is basically what Facebook is. Someone posts something, and waits for another person to reply or like it. Twitter on the other hand, is more of a network because people “connect” through follows but nobody is really connected. People will post something then not really care (for the most part) if they don’t get a response. Many twitter accounts are strictly for the purpose of advertising a website or service, which doesn’t necessarily happen in a community like Facebook. Sure Facebook has product pages, but the majority of pages are for the other users. You’re more involved in that person on Facebook, rather than their followers/tweets on Twitter.

I have implemented tools which allow users to share pages of my site to Facebook and Twitter, because 1) it seems like that’s the cool thing to do, and 2) it can help people get to my site through other people. As for participation on the internet, I feel that it has always been useful because your content has to be evaluated objectively, which is just what people on the internet will do, just with less positivity. Trolls are everywhere. Like I said in a previous post, I think that corporate blogging is useless unless it is extremely relevant to me. Twitter from companies is useful at times if I miss something on their website or haven’t been on it in a while.

From the start, I had wanted to improve my personal website, which was very basic and did not have any real content on it. I had my domain name from before the semester started, but it works because it is my personal site anyway. After I work on my SEO, people should be able to see my website easier by just googling “dustin varnell,” but it is also easily accessible by visiting dustinvarnell.com.

I see personal branding as kind of how others see you and what you do. Corporate blogging for the most part I see as boring unless it extremely relevant to my interests. Writing for the web is definitely something I had not really thought about before this semester, because I didn’t really realize how much people don’t pay attention on the internet.  Usability and accessibility seem like an obvious goal since you never know what your users will be viewing your website on, and their situations.

My experience with wordpress is essentially all positive, though there are a few things I wish would be a little easier. For example, their upload limit seems to be 10mb, which means anything bigger than that I have to upload using an FTP then link to, which just takes longer. I modified my CSS a tiny bit, my html a little, but didn’t mess with my js.

I’m still looking for a good gallery plugin to display photos better, but for now what I have will work. I have seen some people with complicated flash based galleries, which would be nice eventually but I don’t have the time or experience to pull one of those off yet.

I’ll continue to work on the site and see what I can do with it. If nothing else, its just an extra email address.

For my fifth task, I removed all of the existing images, resized most of them, and uploaded different ones to my website. I made the “My work” page look much cleaner, and I also “finished” my front page.

http://www.dustinvarnell.com/my-work/

For my 4th task, I added Google Analytics to my website. Very cool tool, everyone should have it.

dustinvarnell.com

For my third task I added a few plugins, namely the WordPress SEO and a few API things. Users can also share a page to social networks through a plugin that required developer codes from each site. Facebook and Twitter are working right now.

http://www.dustinvarnell.com/

For my 2nd task, I modified the theme on my website a little bit and added a front page where I can add images for another task. I changed the background color, still subject to change but I like how it looks right now. I also added a little content as well.

dustinvarnell.com

atec3361.dustinvarnell.com/phpassignment.php