Websites and Final Reflection

Creating a website is a daunting task to many because of all the information and time it requires to build one; however, it isn’t as bad to create when you know some tips.

The first tip to creating a website is to learn from the mistakes of others who created websites. Instead of learning mistakes through hard knocks for yourself, you can avoid some crucial mistakes at the expense of others. The main mistakes to avoid are inappropriately designing your website and making your website hard to navigate. The design of the website is probably the most critical mistake people make as they don’t properly think through and imagine beforehand what they want. Instead, people haphazardly create designs which make no sense and put things together which are unfitting. To remedy this issue, search online a theme you wish to use and stick with it. Consulting outside resources will be your friend in designing your perfect website. Moreover, it’s imperative once you have made a nice website to ensure that it has a fluid and smooth navigation. Far too many times creators make their website too complicated which makes things confusing. Avoid this and stay with a simple yet effective navigation design.  

If you are new to creating websites and are unsure where to start, I’d recommend trying out a website builder to assist you in the creation of your website. Website builders allow you to get a head start on the content of your website without getting bogged down in the design and creation of your website. Often times, these website builders will allow you to create a template which then can be easily edited to your preference. Popular and effective website builders which start out free are Wix and Weebly. These builders are popular enough that if you are unsure how a button functions or get lost, you can search on Google a plethora of tutorials which will help you.

Additionally, there are some user friendly web design tools that you should consider using if you want to go a step higher with your website. The first tool or enhancement that you should do for your website is to make it responsive. A responsive website means that the website works flawlessly on desktop computers as well as mobile devices. When viewers view your website and see the “responsiveness” of it, it makes your website stand out among so many websites which fail to be responsive. Furthermore, the speed of your website matters since many users today have a shorter attention span and expect a fast and speedy website. When a website freezes and does not load, research shows that many will stop dealing with the website and go to another. Likewise, it’s important to guarantee that the host of your website has a good connection with its servers.

Light, Bright, & Polite Chapter 8

Josh Ochs's eighth chapter of his book Light, Bright, & Polite discusses how to handle negative posts on social media. He makes the point that the first one or two things that show up about you on a Google search paints a picture of what you may be like. This feature can specifically be used in a positive way to benefit you instead of seeing bad things about you. Likewise, choose to post things that demonstrate goodness, friends and family, community service, or things that edify or build others up. When you keep your posts "Light, Bright & Polite" it shows that you are disciplined enough to use social media in a positive way.

Additionally, when people search for you the Internet and you do not show up, Ochs thinks that is a bad thing. Not posting because of fear of messing up or just being anti-social reveals the type of person you are and not only that but not having a presence on social media means people will miss all the good things you have done or been involved in. When posting on social media, it's important to put everything you post through a personal filter and ask yourself if the fruit of your actions will bear love, joy, and peace or hate, despair, and strife. 

Moreover, in this chapter, Ochs tells that it is inevitable for people to post negative posts about you since you are on a virtual space where people can comment and tell their thoughts. The best away to counter act negative posts is to have a plan. For example, if someone posts something negative about me on social media and it generates a large discussion, my goal would be to talk face to face with the person who has the issue; that way the issue can be resolved quickly. Nevertheless, it is also best to not reply to naysayers as they want to take your time and talent away from you and cause you to be distracted. I think Josh Ochs's instructions can be very useful if one puts them into practice.

Overview of the Semester

I would recommend the “Exploring your Digital Portfolio” class to students who like tweeting and engaging on online conversations. This class is also a very helpful general class at Stockton University and it will help you create a professional Twitter, a professional LinkedIn, as well as a professional personal website. One thing I enjoyed about this class was the different applications which were shown and displayed. Many of the applications and online tools I learned I never heard of and learning them through a professional lens was especially useful. I now use Google scholar to research studies and Microsoft’s presentation tool to help pace myself along with many other tools I took notes on. I would not recommend this course to students who are not proactive as many of the assignments such as the Twitter PLN requires a certain amount of tweets per week. One recommendation I have for this course is to make instructions more clear and concise. I found myself confused for some assignments and having clear instructions on a simple and easy to use platform would be very beneficial.

Signing off,

Rocco Mancuso