Shameer S. Dhaliwal

I’ll begin this topic with a blunt admission: my website, doesn’t necessarily need to cultivate a community. Although the immediate practical considerations of community aren’t as numerous for my website as they may be for others’, the insight I’ve gained on internet communities during this class is valuable nonetheless. To differentiate between broadcast tools and community tools, the structures of both must be considered. Whereas broadcast tools, as their names suggest, simply send across a one way message from author to audience, community tools allow a two way exchange, providing a grounds for the most important part of any community: dialogue.

The variety of tools available each fulfill specific purposes, and should be used accordingly. Far too many organizations erroneously employ broadcast and community tools, only because such practice is fashionable. A discerning eye, and a clear understanding of one’s priorities is needed before utilizing any tool. Tools, such as RSS feeds, and blogs, must be used correctly, in order to maintain a respectable web presence and rapport. Facebook pages especially, run the risk of becoming blatant and pushy eyesores, if a reputation within Facebook is not established, and the only activities of the page is advertisement.

Although a community can be varied and diverse, that does not mean that the meaning of community is nebulous, or worse, ill-defined. Websites like Facebook and Twitter cannot be considered communities in the truest sense. Although both do involve limited interaction between users and developers,  they derive from existing, off site communities, and as such, are only social networking tools.  Blogs, however, can be considered communities, if the blog manager nurtures the reader base, and allows a medium for two-way discussion. For a more personal example, the Live Discussion area of this website  supports a community, with frequent, bilateral discussion within an accessible medium.

The logo is complete, SEO is in place, and Contact Form 7 is up and running. Without further ado, I present to you Dallas International Adoption Clinic

As presentation day looms near, I think it’s an appropriate time to reflect back on my experience of creating, or more accurately redoing, my website. To be frank, I’m not too worried about the public speaking part of the presentation, and more worried about filling the allotted time, since my website is a relatively small one. In general, website creation was far less intimidating than I had originally expected, and much more interesting.

I’m confident that I’ve achieved my original goals of the website: to provide an internet prescence for Dallas International Adoption & provide accessible methods of contact. My intended audience would be mainly parents interested in adopting a child from another country, and the overall design of my website reflects as much. Soft colors, clean design & easy navigation help to convey helpfulness, without diminishing the professionalism of the organization. My current, easy-to-remember domain name also reflects similar values of ease of access.  I chose to invest in a custom WordPress theme, as evidenced by the Javascript navigational bar that is far beyond my ability to recreate. The theme manages to effectively display the relatively scarce amount of content with aesthetic appeal and accessibility.

Since I chose WordPress for my website, and a wordpress custom theme, most of the coding was already done for me. However, I did not intend to keep the original design, for it was too sterile for an adoption clinic website. Fortunately, the theme I employed (Coalition), provided a custom.css file to allow for changes to the core theme. I was able to make the necessary changes (logos, background, type color). The theme’s own page layout interface allowed for easy changes to various pages of content, and body copy. As far as the future of this website goes, I doubt it will change too radically. I was forced to update a few dead links, and adjust some body copy to meet acceptable standards for writing on the web, and that’s as far as I’d think the website would need to change.

To be perfectly honest, I was, unfortunately, not present the Friday when the guest speaker Stephen Anderson made his appearance, due to health reasons. However, his methods of ‘Seductive Interactions’ are well documented throughout the internet. I’ve done some catch up reading, and his Seductive Interactions are as follows.

Stephen Anderson’s concept of ‘Seductive Interactions’ provides a valuable into the psyche of the average web browser. The seductivity of such interactions is derived from their ability to entice the user; encouraging, or incentivizing the user to browse further. Although the term seduction is often assigned a sexual connotation, the allure of Seductive Interactions is anything but. Instead, Seductive Interactions takes advantage of other aspects of human psychology to keep a user browsing a website.  For example, the Curiosity principle Anderson espouses, is one such aspect. Enabling the user to become curious is to essentially build a hunger for additional content within your website. Cultivating, and successfully manipulating such a hunger, is a crucial tool for websites. Websites such as Pinterest employ tactics to stimulate a web user’s curiosity.  Pinterest’s image sprawl is non-uniform, and thus always has unseen images near the bottom margins. As a result, the user’s curiosity is piqued, and the user will scroll ad nauseum through Pinterest.

Another aspect is covered within the Peak-End theory. The Peak-End theory, as it name unsubtly suggests, states that the web user’s overall impression of a website is based on their emotional peak during use, pleasant or otherwise, and the end use of the site. Being able to identify such critical areas, and achieving a fuller understanding of the user’s perspective is invaluable to web developers. Exploiting this behavior would be a must for commerce websites, of which revenue is dependent upon users’ willingness to interact with the said websites’ checkout system.

Both tasks 2 and 3 are complete; a linkedin profile association and new theme are up and running

Something went horribly wrong for the php files, and I’m still trying to figure out what. EDIT: found out I didn’t properly bracket the HTML link elements; the PHP files are good now.

The  FTP editor is working fine, though.

With a filler theme already running, and a domain name being hosted by webfaction, site setup is complete. 

I’m pretty new to WordPress, so I have little prior knowledge of it. As far as I know, it offers downloadable suites, and blogs based from WordPress website. Past that, I’m pretty unfamiliar with WordPress. I’ve never really read through an End User License Agreement; I haven’t really found the need to do so. You can guess how much I know about the different license types, too. My use of content management systems is also a bit lacking.

I have a vague idea of what open source means: that the code for a program or suite is freely available and editable, allowing free redistribution. Past that, my knowledge is lacking. Beyond the materials provided to me within this course, I’m not too savvy in the field of usability. From its name, I’d guess it has to do something with making websites/software/etc more accessible, and easier for the average internet user.

As I’ve briefly mentioned before, the website needs to have two qualities: accessibility, and friendliness. Falling short of that, no number of stock photos, flash animations or interesting jingle would help redeem the site.  These two criteria need to be taken into consideration when designing the logo, the web layout, and editing the content. Both of my personas should feel welcome to the site, and comfortable browsing the website. Some may think I’m overemphasizing this point, but I’d disagree. The difference between a warm, friendly site, and a cold, impersonal one is significant. People would be more receptive to a small, cozy house, smelling of fresh baked cookies; than a cold industrial housing unit with bolted down furniture and the rank smell of disinfectant.

So many themes, and such a large pricetag

I’ve been looking through WordPress themes on and off, and I’ve realized one thing: I can’t seem to decide on any one theme. Another thing I’m beginning to find out is that there are few, if any, free themes that would adequately serve the purposes of the website I’m creating. As is with many other goods and services, the highest quality themes will inflict the highest costs. The necessity of a one page theme, a very uncommon theme type, doesn’t help ameliorate this situation either.

In regards to dividing the ‘attention’ of the site between its separate elements, I suppose I have quite an easy job. Considering I only have about 6 separate elements. My first preference in allocating attention is to maximize focus on the ‘about us’, ‘consultation’, and ‘insurance’; while putting the remaining 3 elements to an auxiliary position. To be honest though, the level of actual content is incredibly low, evident by the various’ filler’ techniques the previous web designers used (ex: redundant toolbars, several instances of the same toolbar, repetition of body text); so I would not think that allocating attention would be that important an issue.

As far as appealing site design goes, the Abduzeedo website is as good an example as any. A sleek layout and easy to use interface gives the site a clean, yet trendy feel. The current adoption site however, is anything but good design. Redundant toolbars, inconsistent type, and generic images do not make an appealing design.

My favorite color is green, but my personal preference has little to do with color dynamics in website design. The colors used within the website I’m designing need to be consistent, aesthetically pleasing, and able to convey appropriate emotional tones. I’m aware that monitor resolution would affect the relative scale of browsers. A site viewed on my 1920×1080 monitor would have far more empty space than if it was seen through a 1024×768 display. I’m vaguely aware that a computer monitor can display millions of colors, through a 24 bit system. I’m more familiar with fonts, to be honest. I know that each font allows one’s computer to display text according to the font’s visual style. My computer has several hundred fonts, many of which are freeware; meaning I can use them freely for commercial purposes.