What I did:

The first thing I did for this review site was to create a static page which would act as my homepage. This involved using a support page as I didn’t know how to do this on my own. The page I used was: https://en.support.wordpress.com/pages/.

Once I had learned how to do this, I was able to select a theme, which I chose as ‘Twenty Thirteen’, and I chose my title and heading photos which would be displayed prominently at the top of the page.

The next thing for me to do was to create another page which would be the main review page that the two reviews would be connected to. This was a relatively simple page to create as I didn’t have to do anything to it and there was very little text that needed to go onto it.

The next stage was to create the review pages. I wrote both of the reviews on Microsoft Word, which meant that all I had to do to create the content on those pages was copy and paste what I had done already into the text and media section. Some of the formatting wasn’t compatible when required some slight modifications, however these things were not major so I didn’t need to worry.

I then needed to create an ‘About’ page. This was to explain a little bit about myself and what I wanted to do in the future. This page only took 5 minutes as it was a small page and didn’t need to be too detailed.

The last stage was to add citations for all the images and information I had used. This took a while as I had used several images, but I used Google’s images search feature to upload the images I had used to find them online. When I had found them I was then able to note down the links and pages I had taken them from for my citations.

Elements of this task which were easiest to compete:

I found that the reviews were relatively easy to complete. This is because I am familiar with both of the apps that I am reviewing (Instagram and the Blackboard App). I was able to look at the apps having used them a fair amount, which meant that I had experienced the good things and the bad things about both of them. This meant that writing the reviews and judging them was relatively easy.

Another thing I found relatively easy to do was the design work for the website. I am quite a creative person so I enjoyed making the website look aesthetically pleasing and professional. I chose from one of the main general themes and then modified them accordingly.

Elements of the task that gave me the most trouble:

I found that there were a few parts of the website creation which I found challenging. I have relatively no experience with using WordPress. I found that I had to use the internet to find information. I didn’t know how to create a ‘static’ page, which was needed for the home page and this report page. To find out this information I used a WordPress support page (referenced on my references page) which explained how to do different things. I also used this page to find out how to create parent pages for the main reviews page, and each of the review pages.

I also found some of the page creation was a hassle at times. I sometimes inserted an image for it to appear in the wrong place, or not in the way I had wanted it to. This formatting issue held my up several times throughout the creation process. In one instance I wanted to insert an image between two sections of text, and found it difficult because the picture wouldn’t go into that area. To overcome all of these issues, I changes the layout of my text so that the images occupied several lines of text, and the next set of text sat below. This wasn’t the perfect solution as it broke up the pages in a way I didn’t really want, but it resolved the formatting issue that I was having.