#1

This is not my first rodeo using WordPress. I use it both for HerCampus and for PantherNow. However, it is my first time designing the webpage, unlike how I’ve been using it, which is just using it to post. 

I first wanted the design of my profile to be bright and colorful, and use the same theme as a blog, and be similar to how PantherNow has its website set up. I did find out when designing my portfolio that the color usage was a bit too much and became a bit distracting, as one of my classmates talked about with Emily Henry’s website. So I switched gears and chose the new theme of a “tortured poet,” which is something I also relate to. Because what is an English major if not tortured.   

When setting up the website, I knew a lot of the basics, since it’s pretty straightforward. I knew I wanted to have all my pieces stickied to the home page for quick access, and then they would be sorted out by module. That is where I ran into trouble figuring out how to sort my pieces into module-specific pages. I tried using the “How To Make a WordPress Website – Step by Step” video provided in the reading list, but that didn’t help me much. So I go to my best friend, Google. It took a video or 2 until I found the “How to Add Blog Posts to Pages in WordPress”. The video itself wasn’t that helpful, but the comments on the video were and pointed me in the right direction to sort out my posts. 

The writing was the easiest part of this entire experience. I wrote for HerCampus for 2 years, and I know the general rules about writing for the web. Something I did try to focus on was adding humor into my writing, which is something I’ve been working on with my writers at PantherNow. As well, I wanted to personalize my writing as the Wikihow article said. The hardest thing to write for me was the about statement, which I scored well the first time, but was told to rewrite it, which I did. I hope it’s better now ;). 

I’m excited to keep learning and working on this project!

#2

Things That Are Working 

I believe that everything is running pretty smoothly on my website. From my peer reviewer, they have listed that my website is easy to navigate and my tone is very approachable and doesn’t make me seem like a stuck-up journalist (which, if you ask my writers, they may say otherwise). From my original first “beta” launch, I have changed a lot. 

To start, I changed the navigational tabs to be a bit more universal instead of being directly tied to the class and assignments. However, to me, this website is just for a class. But I have been using what I’ve learned to redo my original personal portfolio and create a new personal portfolio. 

Things To Improve 

From what my peer reviewer listed, I tend to have longer paragraphs and not that many subheadings. I will say I am guilty of this. I try to write with shorter sentences in mind, but sometimes that doesn’t work for what I am trying to say. 

They also said some of my sentences could use some editing. I will also plead guilty to this because sometimes I just write. Nothing in my head besides the words I am writing. As well, I am also guilty of leaving things a bit unfinished if I know it’s going to be peer reviewed. I need to have something for people to comment on, don’t I? 

These are all things I want to keep in mind moving forward into Module 3. Especially before I turn my website in for the final. 

#3

I started editing by focusing on my pages that didn’t have many of my SEO words. Most of my blog and writing samples have good SEO content, but my about statement needed some improvement. My keyword density report showed that my original about statement had 1 SEO word (0.5% of my words), so I made sure to add a couple more of my keywords, like book and travel, to meet the 1% threshold. 

I then went into my photo galleries. I had gained a few comments about how I could enlarge the photos so that readers could see them better. I couldn’t find how to enlarge one photo at a time, so instead I went and did 2 columns of photos, so all the photos became enlarged and would be seen more intimately. Also, for my galleries, I went back in and added captions to the photos. I gathered the New York Art gallery so quickly that I never added captions. These are important so that my readers can understand what they are looking at. 

Then I went and used the techniques from this article by MasterClass about how to self-edit. You’re probably thinking, “Brooke, aren’t you an English major? Shouldn’t you be good at grammar and editing?” I’m going to respond with yes, I believe I’m above the average person when it comes to grammar or editing. However, I’m not perfect, and I sometimes look at my work too objectively, which clouds my judgment, so taking the time to slow down and line edit or read my articles aloud is perfectly ok.

Going back to SEO content, I didn’t feel the need to incorporate too many of my keywords into the articles. My keyword density report did show I have used a lot of my keywords in my articles already. But I have over a million words on this portfolio, and each article should have around 1-2% of it being keywords. I combined all my blog posts and articles to do my keyword density report, so even though it shows I only have about 0.01% of my words are keywords, I believe every article has about 1-2% of keywords. 

Editing this website has probably been the easiest part of the entire process because editing is something I tend to excel at. I also didn’t have to rush to put out new content. I got to slow down and really look at how I’ve put together this website, and I got to reflect on how far I’ve come this semester. 

Completion Checklist

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