So, by the end of this semester, I honestly feel a little disappointed with the work I’ve done on this site. I’ll explain why in a moment, but I should first explain what I did to change the site at this point. I added an “About” page to make it more personal and relevant to me beyond this particular course, and I changed the menu to read “Blog Feed” and “DMCult Projects” to differentiate the projects relevant to the course from any future endeavors I use the site for. I also added the DMCult posts as submenus underneath the main categories, and added a corresponding list of links to the major project entries on the “DMCult projects page itself.
In the future, I expect I may use the site for some blog posts I’ve been thinking of writing. I do write fiction, and I’m not sure if I want to post it here, but it’s worth considering, and I have an idea for a personal essay that may be my first non-DMCult post.
In terms of what I accomplished, I think I made it relatively user-friendly, which I think is the most important thing. The reader can see my little bio in the “About” page, and they can see which blog posts count as “projects” by moving the cursor to the main menu to bring up the submenus. However, I don’t like that the “DMCult Projects” still count as blog posts that show up in the blog feed. It just seems confusing to me. I think, with the theme and layout I currently have for the site, in order to change it I may have to re-create the “posts” as “pages,” which is what I should have labeled them originally. And I don’t think I can change them from posts to pages with a simple click, so for now I’m somewhat stuck with it. My main problem with this system is that it’s cumbersome. In order to list all the project posts on the “DMCult Projects” menu, I have to post them on the blog feed, then add the post to the main menu, and then re-order the menu so that it comes up under DMCult Projects. It shouldn’t affect the user’s experience, but it’s just a little annoying for me as the designer. These types of quirks are things I may want to tweak in the future.
All-in-all, I think my website has been a success, at least for the purposes of this class, and I didn’t want to ruin it by making it overly complicated or difficult to navigate. I have given the user a number of ways to navigate the site and find whatever page they need, as well as organize the different types of posts I’ve put on the website so far, and in my book that’s a success.
Harrison Bloom 