Reflections on WordPress

This site was my introduction to content management systems, and on the whole, my experience with WordPress was a positive one. Dr. Oguz set up each team's initial website/blog, and each team member was then required to create a user account and log into their team's site. I was intimidated at first, but once I logged in, I had no problems navigating the site.

As stated, the first thing I did was create my user account. This was exceedingly simple, as it did not require any personal information beyond my email address. Once I received my password, I logged into my account (and changed my password). Upon visiting my team's site, I found that my two teammates had already been experimenting with themes, pages, posts, widgets, and plug-ins. I read through what they had posted, and then created a test-post of my own. I had no problems doing this.

I then created a profile page for myself. I initially created a very brief 2-3 line paragraph for myself, but I edited this later to include a picture and more extensive information about myself. I also removed my last name from the site, for privacy reasons.

After creating my profile page, I began to experiment with other administration options. I added a calendar to the sidebar, as well as a drop-down menu that allows readers to sort blog postings by category. However, I realized once I had added this that we only had one category of postings so far, so I created categories for each team-member's name, and added my name to my postings. I posted a notification of this to my team-members, and later saw in the most recent posts that they had added their names to their posts. I changed the time stamp on our blog posts, and experimented with themes/appearance settings, as well as adding things to the sidebar (and removing them). I also deactivated registration of new users for our site, as all group members had registered by this time.

As stated, all in all, I feel that the experience was a positive one. I am now far less intimidated by navigating the administrative functions of content management systems. WordPress is very intuitive in that regard. However, I do feel that I am lacking in creating the foundation of a WordPress site. I read through the "Getting Started with WordPress" page, and from what I understood, a user must either create a web server to host their WordPress site (which is way beyond my level of expertise), or register with an external web server (one that supports PHP and MySQL) and use it to support your WordPress site. After doing a little research, I found that there are several free web servers that can be used for this purpose, as well as servers that offer free domain names but charge a nominal monthly fee for web hosting, so this is an option.

As stated in my previous post, I am curious if WordPress is the CMS used by previous MLIS students to host their digital portfolios. It seems to me that this would be a good site for that purpose. I wonder if this is something that we will learn in this course, or in a different course (perhaps Information Architecture?).

In conclusion, this assignment has inspired me to learn more about creating and managing websites (more complicated than Blogger sites). I feel capable of at least the basic administrative functions, and I have a better understanding of where to look for more information.