Final - community website

The end is nigh! Now we have to develop a website for ourselves or a community group. I have chosen to do a website for Women's Network Northern Territory (WNNT), a not for profit organisation. WNNT currently have a site but it is not the easiest to navigate and it definitely needs a freshen up! http://www.womensnetworknt.com/ I wanted to create something simple, clean and easy to use. I have used the colours already present in the existing logo, I looked at introducing other corresponding colours from the fabulous website http://www.kuler.adobe.com/ (worth a visit) but decided I preferred to keep it simple. HTML & I will eventually become good friends at the moment, I really don't think the code actually likes me at all! Every time I put in an image or add some more text, the whole page goes elsewhere! This website has proved to be quite frustrating and a lot of time spent trying things out, moving things around, changing colour and so on. I had to remind myself numerous times to be patient!

Just when I thought it was safe to submit, after numerous validations, the entire website decided to go haywire! Now I am not happy with the end result as it really isn't quite what I wanted to achieve after 12 weeks!

I will admit, I didn't grasp the whole HTML as quickly as some of my fellow students, but I am determined to keep practising as I would like to see the site I have developed being used by WNNT. There are still many things I would like to introduce, widgets, RSS feed...but all in good time!

Below is the final result. To visit the website simply click on the image.

Week 5 - Exercise 2

Now, let the fun begin! Haha... With what we have learnt so far we have to create a header, a navigation bar (with links), a container consisting of 3 bodies and a footer. We are asked to design the front page with the knowledge we have from other modules in cert IV design. We are encouraged to visit www.w3schools.com and complete the tasks and tutorials. This is an exercise that I will need to do a fews time over again to get the hang of it. Quite exciting to see what you have created, although it is very basic, appear on the world wide web.

Week 4 - Exercise 1 - Modules 4 & 5

We are given modules and exercises to complete from the CDU website. Using a plain text document, we are asked to make up a Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) and give the document some structure. So, above is the completed exercise by using headings, paragraphs, inline elements, hyperlinks. The document now has the 4 structural elements; HTML, head, title & body.

Week 3 - Dreamweaver (exercise 1)

This is where we have to get to know the softwear - Dreamweaver CS3!

As I have never done anything like this before, I admit, I find it all quite overwhelming!

We are given a very basic template that we had to re-design using Photoshop CS3, changes had to be made to the template, saved and then we are shown how to change things around using a cascading style sheet (CSS)

Week 2 - Good web design using CRAP

Using the 'crap' principles we are asked to give examples of 3 good websites.
Contrast
Repetition
Alignment
Proximity
For more information about these unorthodox web designers click on the URL http://www.crapwebdesign.com/

Three examples are:
http://www.controlabilty.com.au/
Contrast; This website has contrast throughout with the bold red background. Repetition; There is repetition on every page, the red background with finger print and the grey 'screen' and the logo down the right side of the screen, each page has an image.
Alignment; The tabs are all right aligned and the body text is left aligned. The screen scrolls across to the next page as you navigate. Proximity; The navigation tabs are set up on each page in the same location as is the logo.

http://www.adonisstrippers.co.uk/








http://www.jaxhousemusic.com/

Week 1 - Examples of good & bad websites

First day at Uni and everything is quite daunting! In our first lesson of web design we had to try and describe ourselves using colours and pictures. We had 4 boxes, one for a shape, one for a word, one for a colour and one for an object.

Colour: RED
Shape:
Object: CAMERA
Word: CRAZY

This excercise gave us an opportunity to learn more about our fellow students and what kind of personalities they have.

Our discussion during class led us to talk about what make a good website and what makes a bad website:

• GOOD;
• Easy to navigate
• Fast loading
• Up to date & user friendly
• Correct information
• Quality images
• Legibility
• Security
• Shopping cart
• Interactive
• Good quality content
• Good market research
• Original/unique information

• BAD;
• Clutter
• Broken links
• Pop ups
• Bad design
• Irrelevant details
• Verbosity
• No reference to information published
• No contact details
• Over ambitious
• Poor layout
  

We then had to surf the Internet in seach of 3 examples of BAD websites and 3 examples of GOOD websites. There were so many to choose from, mine are listed below:

BAD WEBSITE EXAMPLES:
This is as bad as it gets! They have used every colour in the rainbow and every font imaginable! The photos are pixelated and it is not the easiest website to navigate through, I struggled to read half of the links on the left hand side! http://www.fabriclank.co.uk/

This website has no focus! The links are all over the home page and again the photos used are pixelated. When you click on one of the many links, you are greeted with flashing colour that would send the calmest person in the world into panic attacks! http://www.5safepoints.com/

Really annoying music plays as soon as you enter this website! I couldn't find a quick way to turn it off and to top that off there is annoying text that follows the cursor around wherever it goes, welcoming you to the website! It is a site for an airport shuttle bus but I just couldn't wait to get out of there! http://www.stexps.com/