Digital Identity through Blogging

            So you want to expand your digital identity and brand but you don’t know where to start. Have you tried one of those new-fangled blog contraptions? They were all the rage in 2004 and have now become ubiquitous with the internet. Blogs are a great way to get your message out there and expand your web presence and help define your digital identity.

            Unless you’ve been living under a rock with poor wifi signal for the past decade, you should be pretty familiar with blogs. But, just because you’re familiar with blogs doesn’t mean you can just jump right in and start blogging about who-knows-what and expect to be getting the kind of traffic that makes servers look back on the digg effect fondly; you’ve got to have a message!

            What topics do you like? What subjects do you feel confident talking about day after day? Do you actually know what you’re talking about or just typing the first thing that comes to your head? If not, save it for youtube comments.  When people visit a blog they want to read an article or post that covers a topic that interests them, and they want to feel like the person writing said post is a reputable source who knows what he or she is talking about.

            Writing about a subject that you are passionate and knowledgeable about builds ethos, or credibility, and readers feel comfortable gleaning information from your blog. The more people trust you, the more traffic you’ll get.

            If you become a trusted source of info on a particular topic you could call yourself an expert, and everybody loves experts! Being an expert helps your digital identity immensely. You’ll be on guru level. Pretty soon you’ll be on all the “who to follow” lists and hobnobbing with all the other web-leberties at whatever kind of events web-leverties hang out at (SxSW? SDCC?).

            So go forth young person! Find your voice! Blog!

Intermediate Web Design Week 5 Work.

This week I was charged with the task of making a form for submitting recipes to our groups site iGarLikeIt.com. Jenna composed a mock up to for me to use as an example along with a similar form at Tasty Kitchen. Since we are coding our site in HTML5 I used this Smashing Magazine and diveintohtml5 guide for references.

The form is fleshed out but the options have no value or javascript attached to them at the moment. I will work on making the form fully functional this week. It can be viewed here.

Intermediate Web Design Week 3

This week in class we settled on a name for the site igarlikeit.com (which the project will be referred to from here on out).  We also fleshed out ideas on content and features. After a brief discussion our group split into two teams, the design and content team and us code monkeys on the other.

Our discussion time was spent figuring out how to best implement HTML5 and video. We also delegated roles for the research. My assignment was to build a site map for the site and figure out how users would navigate through the site. Here is the current site map. I will revise it after I receive feedback from the rest of the team.

I envision the navigation will be displayed inline below the header or to the left of the content with drop down menus or breadcrumb navigation to help the user keep track of where they are within the site.  I believe we are also planning on implementing a jQuery slider on the Home page that will link to certain recipes or articles on the site.  We are also planning to add secondary navigation in the footer that leads the user to all the main pages listed in the nav bar as well as sending them to a contact and user agreement/terms page.

For my research on HTML5 I decided to focus on the <video> tag as well as finding useful reference pages and cheat sheets. ilovecolors had a great article on video in HTML5 with links to third party video players as well as tutorials on using the <video> tag.  The W3C provides a nice, in-depth guide to HTML5 while webresourcesdepot.com and webhostingsecretrevealed.com provide links to many more HTML5 tutorials and resources. 

Intermediate Web Design Week 2

In the second week of class, our group discussed how to better define and narrow down our goals for the site and we reached the decision to create a site that would assist users in creating tasty dishes centered around, or using garlic.

My task for the week was researching jQuery and how it may be implemented in the site. In my research I found many plugins  that could enhance everything from layout to data. All these resources were found at The official jQuery site and Smashing Magazine. From simple image sliders and drop down menues to The possibilities are endless with jQuery. It all depends on what the content and design teams come up with.

My Role as Production Developer

Intermediate Web Design Week 1:

We formed a group to work on a stie that will be completed by the end of the class. Our group has decided to make a site catering to college students and other young single adults to help them create a tasty meal with whatever they can find in their kitchen by having users input a list of ingredients and generating recipes based on said ingredients.

I have taken up the role of Production Developer.  I will be working alongside Oscar Barajas to make sure the designs and ideas put forth by our group look and work properly.  A large part of my duties will include coding and researching and implementing database technologies to help users find recipes based on the ingredients they provide.

I foresee facing chalenges in the implementation of the database(s). I've never coded php or other database languages so that aspect may be quite a challenge. The eleven week time frame may also be a challenge. Everyone in the group will have to be on top of their game to meet deadlines and make our final product the best it can possibly be.