Assignment Description

This semester students will create individual blogs on their WordPress.org site that engage with the texts we’ll be reading, reflect on their web design progress, and share ideas with their future audience. Each student will be responsible for at least 3 blog posts and 2 comments on classmate’s blog posts per week: 1) one that extends the class discussion; 2) one that discusses their web site progress; and starting Week 6, the week the first installation is due, 3) one based on a weekly feature that you create to help promote yourself.

Posts that extend class discussion should take what we have discussed in class about a text or series of texts and continue the discussion. Often in class we will come up with a list of questions that are raised by the text. A post might address one of those questions. It may also address questions or concerns about XHTML, CSS, WordPress, and so on, if the readings for the week are from out HTML, CSS, and WordPress books.

Posts that discuss your web site progress should do just that: discuss where you are in the stage of designing your web site. You might write about: what your plans are, what you’re having trouble with, what you hope the site looks like, what you accomplished this past week, what you’re hoping to accomplish later in the week, what features you’ve seen on other sites that you might like to incorporate, and so on. You may also use this portion of the blog to link to and discuss blog posts composed by other students in the class or blog posts/articles relating to web design, online publishing, and other course-related web design topics that you’ve found online. Don’t just write about the same thing every week. Be creative in your topics and how you choose to present it.

Posts that are a weekly feature will be discussed more at a later date.

For each blog post you create, remember to be sure to compose:

• a meaningful title written for an audience larger than our class
• an approach that does not assume the reader knows what your web site about
• links to items that are able to be linked to that you think your reader will be interested in seeing
• appropriate categories
• appropriate tags and an appropriate number of tags

There is no set requirement for the length of a blog post. Indeed, one of the features of the medium of blogging and the characteristics of posts is that the length is determined by it’s content and goals. However, for our purposes, each post should thoroughly discuss the subject at hand.

Blog Start and End Dates
Posts that extend class discussion: Week 2 – Week 15
Posts about web site progress: Week 2 – Week 15
Posts on a weekly feature: Week 6 – Week 15