As one of the initial projects in EDC667 we read the book Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug and used it as a touch point to begin simplifying our websites so they were easy to navigate and clearly conveyed the information that we wanted to visitors to be able to experience. In my case I took this as an opportunity to step back from my initial website that I used for the first three trimesters of the OMET program and move from a self-designed site in Dreamweaver, to a template-driven site powered by WordPress. WordPress is a blogging solution that allows users to quickly publish commentable blogs and also create pages of content. I chose to host my WordPress installation on a privately-hosted domain which provided me the opportunity to partner with one of my fellow cadre members, Colby Smart, to learn how to set up a WordPress installation on a server using the cpanel tool to configure the settings.
Primary website improvements made, based on reading Krug’s book and dialogue with fellow cadre members:
- Moved from self-designed Dreamweaver site with limited user-functionally to a WordPress-powered site.
- Homepage redesign including a site ID (logo) and tag line (short statement capturing the essence of the site – like a motto).
- Brief statement of purpose on the homepage.
- Improved, tab-based site navigation clearly showing visitors where they are at all times in the site.
- RSS subscription capability for blog posts.
- Utilities area including capability of registering and logging in to the site to comment.
- Clear page names.
- Inclusion of a search function.
- Persistent side-menu with access to key site content and a way to contact me via email.
I will continue to make revisions and updates to my site to ensure that the user experience is clear and easy and that the content becomes the focus, rather than attempting to navigate and use the site itself.
Below are screen shots of my site home page pre and post-redesign:
Daniel Wood's Original Website for OMET.
Daniel Wood's Redesigned Site for OMET.