When designing my blog website, I was keeping it simple with minor changes to the html and more focussed on changes to the CSS of the website. On my “about” page I brought in an image from my Deviantart website as a link to experiment and see how it would look. I created my about page early on this unit but It is a good place to see how far I’ve come and the things that I have learnt. Making dot points was a difficult thing to do and I looked on HTML Dog to guide me in doing this because it was something outside class we didn’t learn. HTML DOG was very helpful with learning the code and cementing the idea of code in my head. The lectures were also helpful in this aspect because we had the lecture and then the things said in the lecture were re-said in my tutorial.
I wanted to keep my blog nice and simple and so I only used two Widgets. These widgets are very helpful to me as they let me know about traffic to my site directly without needing to go to Google analytics. The Facebook like button was a must have widget for my site. I had been on Facebook and already gathered a little following before this unit because I had always kept a record of my work and progress in an album for all my contacts to see. With my 360 or more contacts available to see my work it was important for me to get the word out. I made it a status update every few weeks letting people know about my blog and asking them to check it out. As soon as I started doing this, my sites analytics views shot upward and so did my returning visitors. The idea that they would come directly through Facebook to my page meant having a like button would give them the option of showing appreciation for my work and liking any posts directly so for me it was a must have feature. I needed to look outside the class for more information about bringing widgets to a Tumblr blog. I found step by step instructions on installing my Facebook like widget to the blog.
Another widget I used was really for my personal use only. It is a counter that I have placed at the very bottom of the site as a reminder to me of how many page views I am on. After looking at my analytics and adding in my counter I had the option to start the counter at a number, so I used the overall page views from my Google analytics as a start point. This way I know exactly how many people have visited my site since I started it up.
My site would not turn up in Google search instead if I typed in my username I would find my old Deviantart website. So I needed to tell Google to follow my website and link to it. This was easy enough and something we also learnt in class. I gave my URL to the Google site and got them to crawl me. Now if you type in my username “Wedgenator” Tumblr or my URL into Google you should find my Tumblr site.
In doing my weekly posts I found myself relearning some of the things I had been doing for the last few years and retaking some photos of my previous work and materials. It was as much a learning experience for me as it was me teaching other people about my methods.
Upon starting to change the look of my site I saw the option to change the background image directly. To get my image to the size and position I wanted, I print screened the website and used it as a template. This was helpful because I didn’t want to have my text covering my background images or vice versa. I needed to make sure that the background image and my text didn’t clash. I gathered a collaboration of all my artworks from all different forms of media and used Photoshop to make the collage. When making the collage I tried to make it symmetrical because this always helps to give a site an equalised and strong look. I had a hard time trying to find code to make the background image move with the text when all of it is minimised. I looked for a long time online for the answer and hoped that someone might have had code for me to use. I didn’t end up finding it which was a pity. I used some code I found and destroyed my websites html by mistake. It was lucky that I had saved my html Code in a word document and could cut and paste it all back in. However I needed to go back and redo some of the changes I had already made which was annoying.
I didn’t like the bland fonts that the site template had and decided to bring in some of my own to the CSS. I found with a little research that sans serif fonts are actually considered easier to read and because of this I chose to use the text Sansation. This text is nice because it is rounded and smooth. It is nice and clear and easy to read. I used a Serif font for my heading only because I like the way that this Serif font Stood out as important and different in contrast to the body text. I wanted this to be a part of my overall blog hierarchy. The viewer needs to know what the blog is called and using this strong Serif Font “Apple chancery” I think I achieved this.
I’ve changed the colours of my fonts to have a strong contrast between the red title and the black backdrop and white on black side tab options. I have changed my body text to be a dark shade of purple that isn’t very noticeable and still stands out over the white background.
I only found out in the back end of the semester how to re-blog other peoples posts and since learning how to do this I have seen my blog analytics and followers go up. Connecting with common communities on Tumblr is a great source for new visitors.
In my analytics I have a returning visitor percentage of 73.6% and 26.4% of new visits. I think it is a really successful stat to know that people are coming back to read my blogs getting something out of my weekly lessons/insights.
In looking at my location demographics it is clear that I receive most of my audience from Australia. However a user in Ireland has been back to view my site 19 times and has an average visit duration of 15:17 which is an interesting stat that someone on the other side of the planet still finds my work interesting enough to keep returning. When it comes to browser used to view my site most people are using internet explorer and this isn’t surprising since windows explorer comes installed free with most new windows computers. I learnt this in one of the lectures about the “browser wars”. A huge 86.8% of my traffic is Referral Traffic I can assume that most of these newcomers to my site are people that I have linked from my Facebook page. Using the social media as a tool to bring in more visitors has really boosted my analytics.
http://wedgenator.tumblr.com/post/45863004007/last-week-i-continued-to-talk-about-my-process-of
goku on wall steps artwork – Createing my wall artwork a few months back I wanted to show my tumblr viewers the steps that it took. It was easy to do because I had taken plenty of photos of my process along to way. I have another couple of posts prior to this one that start the process and this post is the end of my process. I give tips and hints as to things that I did that workded for me in my design process.
http://wedgenator.tumblr.com/post/46473941961/to-start-lino-cutting-you-need-to-get-a-few-tools
lino-cutting tools and starting out – Lino-cutting is my favourite media. I started working in lino cutting when I was back at school and felt like in my blog it was going to be one of the key components. I went back and collected photos of my previous work and also I needed to take some new photos of all my equipment. I wanted to show people what is on the market and also what I used for my artworks. I enjoyed talking about lino cuttings because it helped me to go back over it and remember what I used to do.
http://wedgenator.tumblr.com/post/48735047738/so-last-week-i-was-talking-about-tracing-in
Tracing post – In this post I was talking about some of my experimental work in the program adobe illustrator. Tracing different characters from television series and using different levels of thickness in brush. I think this is a great post because it shows the audience that anyone can make a real nice artwork and all it takes is an eye for detail.
