In this course, you’ll develop a publication. You may do this however you wish; you’re in control of this, and it’s entirely your project. As a guide, however, here is a basic roadmap for the development process, based on what students did in previous years. By week two, you should be getting a clearer idea of how you will be publishing yourself online, and we will ask you to make a plan and write a brief proposal for your site/publication. You can use the following to help you plan.
- Register a domain name: it could be yourname.com, yourcoolproject.ca or whatever you think of. This is the public ‘handle’ and address for your publication. We highly recommend Reclaim Hosting for this step.
- Install WordPress, which is the world’s most used content management tool. Again, we recommend Reclaim Hosting for this step (very easy).
- Flesh out your new website by giving it a name, a tagline, and some introductory copy that tells us a bit about it.
- Add your URL (and any other online information you choose) to the Google Sheet. The password will be provided in class.
- Write an “About” page for your site, with a statement “About” it.
- Begin to elaborate your site: will it be a series of posts, unfolding over time, or will it be a collection of more permanent pages? Will it be mostly text, or will you use images, audio, video?
- Build out your site each week: we’d like to see (and read about) progress each week: that could be new content; design or accessibility improvements; connections to other things — remember that each week, you’ll write a brief reflection on your progress; these reflections can be part of your site as well.
- Develop the design of your publication. This can begin as simply as installing a “theme” in WordPress, but we hope you’ll also think about the finer details of layout, typography, colour, and so on…
- Ensure your site is accessible: for example: can it be read and navigated by readers with a visual impairment? What can you do to make this possible?
- Track and analyze the traffic data for your site, using Google Analytics or some other tool. Are you reaching your intended audience? How can you make that happen?
- Consider the longer-term sustainability of your publication: what would it take to keep it going into the future? Is there an opportunity to get paid, or otherwise gain some material reward, from your publication?
You don’t have to do it the same way as this guide suggests — what you create is your own business and you’re not being marked on it. But you do have to write a proposal in the first few weeks of class, and you have to write weekly reports on what you’ve worked on, the decisions you’ve made, and why.
