The first thing I wanted to work on in my website was the aesthetics, because my topic is a film and TV shows blog. I wanted the blog to be colorful and fun, as it’s not serious and just a platform for people who love movies. I chose colors that would be easier to read, which I’ve noticed can completely ruin the UX experience. I chose a fun purple palette, but I decided to keep the main text a dark color. Moreover, I added a header picture and a background Image to the website. I saw Stephen King do this on his website, and it added personality. I chose a header image with the phrase I believe best represents the website, “Good Films Make Your Life Better,” and used a simple star pattern for the background to match my style without overpowering the site. Because my website is blog-style, I have my posts on the homepage in order of publication, so readers can quickly see what’s new. For readers that I looking for something specific, I have a search bar and a categories widget with lists and reviews. I plan to add more categories as I publish more posts. Under the two widgets, I have social media. I mentioned to readers that they should feel free to contact me on my “About us” page. The reading “How to Write a Killer ‘About Us’ Page” by Susan Greene Copywriter stated that it’s important to be empathetic and build a connection, which I think a contact page conveys. In addition to the home page, I have two pages: About Us and Author Bio. I might add more in the future. Both pages feature pictures of me: the About Us page uses a photo that aligns with the website theme, and the bio page uses a more professional headshot.
I am pretty content with how my website is working out. I am trying to be consistent with the theme and keep in mind the personas I’ve created. I don’t think I have to change much when it comes to aesthetics. I feel like they work well with the lighthearted and bubbly content I write. Movies and shows are fun topics, so I want the website to feel as fun as possible. One thing I feel isn’t working, and I’ve been trying to fix for a while, is organizing my menu and homepage. Something I’ve noticed on other students’ websites is that their top menu has a page called “blogs” with all their posts. Right now, all my articles are stuck on the homepage without a dedicated page, which I feel makes them harder to find. I can’t seem to figure out how to fix that. On another topic, I am really excited for Module 3. I am a professional social media consumer and spend a lot of time on it, so I am curious about how I can promote the website on these platforms and learn about analytics.
For the final version of my website, I made a few changes and reviewed the readings and my past self-assessment writings to optimize it to be as user-friendly and web-friendly as possible. My main struggle in building my website was the menu; throughout the semester, I kept adding pages to it and very long titles, which made it crowded and eventually hid the banner picture. It took me a lot of playing around with WordPress to figure out ways to fix it. I ended up finding a way, and now it is less crowded. I also had trouble getting all of my posts into one page of the menu instead of being only on the homepage. Now they are all accessible on the Post page. The FIU web guide and the instructor commentary were very helpful to me throughout the process of making “The Movie Diaries Blog” better.
The changes I made to my content included adding hyperlinks to drive engagement and provide context and information in my articles. I mainly added links to IMDb for quick access to a film’s profile and critics’ ratings, and to YouTube for trailers and my favorite scenes. Additionally, I made sure all my articles included visuals to support both aesthetics and comprehension. In my case, I mainly write about movies, so I added pictures of scenes so readers can have a visual of what I am describing. I also added a funny picture here and there to make my articles feel fun, trendy, and lighthearted. I am not a film critic, and I wanted to make that clear. Something else I had to make sure I did was avoid long blocks of text and add subheadings and bullet points, which make the content more digestible. I also incorporated the keywords into my last articles, which was a good practice for the future. Something I wish I could’ve done better is the template on the website, and make it more dynamic. I am still not completely in love with the look of it, but the template had limitations.
Overall, I wanted my website to be a reflection of myself. My biggest hobby and passion is film and TV, and that’s what I enjoy writing about the most. When creating content, I tried to create something that I and the personas would enjoy reading. I am happy with everything I have learned in this class (I had 0 knowledge of how to create a website before), and with my final result. I enjoyed the process!
All Website content
About us: About us
Author Bio: Author Bio
Contact and press release: Contact me!
Blog Posts: Posts
Gallery: Gallery
Video: Intro Video
Metacritical Self Assessment: Metacritical self assesment
Review: Reviewing the cinephile’s best friend: Letterbox
Writing Sample: Top 4 films to watch on Valentine’s Day this year!
Podcast: Podcast
Analytics Instructions: How to set up analytics for your blog!
Optimized Article:Random Movie Recommendations for When You Can’t Decide What to Watch
Keyword Density Report: Keyword Density Report
Social media: Instagram @moviediariesmedia, X @moviediaries11