I decided to use Blogger.com as it is convenient,
simple and easy to manipulate. I actually used Wordpress.com before and found it lacking in gadgets and it was not flexible.
The template I chose was called 'Ethereal' and I picked it because of how neat, girly, vintage and quaint it looked. For the background picture I used one of Blogger's templates because it reminded me of vintage wallpaper. I knew my readers will mostly be female and I wanted to work on creating a blog that would fit that image. I wanted my readers to be transported when they visited.
I named my blog Pearls and Bonnets as I wanted something that wasn't so straightforward like Regency Lover but something that would evoke a sweet old-fashioned image. It also sounded very smooth, seemed to roll off the tongue and seemed like a name for a vintage magazine. My blog would be like a magazine, using print history books as sources for each post, in order to be more accurate.
As for fonts, I knew I had to pick something vintage. For the title I chose a vintage text called Unifraktur Maguntia. I wanted to use vintage font for the post text as well but soon realized that if I did choose to do that, my posts would be unreadable so I picked Vollkorn. For the post titles I picked a pretty font called Calligrafitti as it felt like someone writing a letter.
As for my Web 2.0 contributing nodes, Facebook was obviously my first choice. I created a group on Facebook so that my readers would be be able to interact and discuss topics from the blog. I next picked Twitter so I could post fun facts about life in the Regency for my readers. Finally I picked Delicious as I could use the site to share interesting articles and pictures related to my blog topic. The style of Delicious with the grouping and labeling of different topics was reflective of my site and because of that, I knew it would be a good node to use, as I could include extra information on every blog post. I wanted my readers to be able to interact with each other and have access to more information. That is my reason for picking these nodes.
When
it came to my sidebar, I knew I had to put in an RSS feed, email
subscription box, a pageviews counter, an archives section, a Facebook share button and links to my nodes. I also decided to make use of the gadgets available and I put in a link to my videos which feature music videos related to that time period.
I feel my choices have reflected what I've learned in class. I'm very interested in making and maintaining blogs and did feel like I learned some good tips from this class. I found Anne Helmond's essay on constructing identity with cultural software to be the most useful as it covered all aspects of creating a web presence (Helmond, 2010). It made me think about how to use widgets in a more effective way, as I had been using them to display images only. Anne's essay talks about using widgets to enable interaction for the readers and that's what I did by putting in a widget for videos and links to all my nodes where they can interact. Anne also warns not to clutter the sidebar so I kept it simple.
In designing the webpage, I had to think about the kind of presence or identity I wanted to portray to my readers. I didn't want to do a personal blog or participate in 'self disclosure' (Qian & Scott, 2007) as I felt very uncomfortable putting my personal thoughts on the net. In one section of Jill Walker's book, she talks about blogs being positioned in a network of similar blogs and how the more you link, the more you will get noticed (Walker, 2008). This is why I chose to look at every angle of my website and make sure that it fit my target group. I also made an effort to link every time I could and even added my friends' blogs to my sidebar so that I would get more traffic.
When it came to picking nodes, Facebook was obvious and Twitter was a great way to post about new posts and express random thoughts relating to my blog topic. I didn't want to choose Delicious at first but after reading the article about it, I realized how useful it could be.
Delicious is known as a folksonomy which organizes all data into sections according to tags and everyone can use it free of charge. What makes it so special is how you can use it to find anything as long as you have a key word in mind and sometimes you can find something totally unexpected (Mathes, 2004). It's like bookmarking only you can share it instantly with anyone. That's why i decided to use it because it because sometimes I find random things I want to share with people and can't because it's just too random by itself. But creating a profile on Delicious for my blog would create a better presence on the net and it would not be random as everything would have its place in the categories.
All in all, I am very happy with my choices in creating this blog and how it turned out.
Sources:
Helmond, A. (2010, January). Identity 2.0: Constructing
identity with cultural software. Retrieved May 17, 2012, from New Media
Research Blog:
http://www.annehelmond.nl/wordpress/wp-content/uploads//2010/01/helmond_identity20_dmiconference.pdf
Mathes, A. (2004, December). Folksonomies
- Cooperative Classification and Communication Through Shared Metadata.
Retrieved May 17, 2012, from Adam Mathes: Vagabond Library Scientist:
http://www.adammathes.com/academic/computer-mediated-communication/folksonomies.html
Qian, H., & Scott, R. C. (2007).
Anonymity and Self-Disclosure on Weblogs. Journal of Computer-Mediated
Communication , 1428-1451.
Walker, J. (2008 ). Blogs,
Communities and Networks. In J. Walker, Blogging (pp. 57-83). Cambridge:
Polity Press.
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