Module 5

Module 5–Online Portfolio Homepage

Learning Objectives

  • To apply your coding skills and rhetorical knowledge to real-world web design
  • To conduct an initial rhetorical analysis of your project

Notes
HTML/CSS or WordPress for the Online Portfolio?–For the online portfolio, you’re allowed to use ONLY html and css. After this much practice in coding, wouldn’t you want to apply your coding skills and your rhetorical knowledge to your web design? I know some of you probably have built webpages before using a WYSIWYG program such as WordPress. For the purpose of this project, you’re not allowed to use a WYSIWYG program. However, you could test design your pages in a WYSIWYG program and then “copy” the code over to your gsucreate site. Feel free to use the templates in the CSS Examples section of W3School tutorials as well. 

Project Analysis–A project profile is a document that analyzes the various aspects of the project that will impact the design decisions you’ll make. The purpose of the profile is to conduct an initial analysis of who your audience is, what their needs are, what they are looking for, what their expectations might be, etc.

Homepage–For this week, you’ll build the home page for your online portfolio. Think carefully about your content and format design. This is the first page your target audience will visit. What are they looking for? If they don’t go to any other links on your site, what essential information do you want them to take away? What would put you in the best light so that they will have the motivation to check out the rest of your portfolio site?

Web Design Concept: Contrast, Repetition, Alignment, and Proximity—These are four basic concepts widely used in design. Their acronym makes up CRAP (yes, crap, but good “crap”). Your reading summary should include a brief definition as well as the major principles of each concept.

Assignments

    1. Build a project analysis—Build a new page and name it “module5.html.” This page should use the heading “Project Analysis.” Use the following as your subheadings, each of which should be followed by at least one paragraph that explains it:
      • Purpose of Website—What type of portfolio are you building? What will be the main purposes of the portfolio website?  
      • Target Audience—Who will be the target audiences of the website? What do you know about this audience? What will be this audience’s main expectations, concerns, and needs? What do you think they’re looking for in a job candidate?
      • Scope of the Website—How extensive will the finished website be? To quantify it, roughly how many pages/links do you have in mind?
      • Website Structure—What will be the main aspects of the website? To think of it in a different way, what do you see as the list of topics this website will cover? For this section, you must present them in a list format. If a particular list item has subitems, use nested lists. Basically, I’m asking you to provide the content of a rough navigation menu.
      • Anything else you want to share with me that you think will be important for me to understand the design rationale
    2. On your “default.html” page, build a link to the above page, use the link text “Module 5.”
    3. Build the home page of your online portfolio. Your homepage should be fairly polished and complete. Of course, after this week, you’re still allowed to modify it if you see fit. Name this page “portfolio.html.”
    4. On your “default.html” page, build a link to the above page, use the link text “Online Portfolio.”
    5. Research about and write a reading summary for the following web design concept: Contrast, Repetition, Alignment, and Proximity. This summary should be placed on your “readings.html” page. Your reading summary for this week should contain the following:
      • A heading on its own line formatted in bold
      • At least 200 words
      • At least two sources with complete bibliographic information in MLA or APA format

Grading

The total points for this week’s module assignments is 40. Grading for the modules starting this week will be quite different from the previous modules. Rather than focusing on coding, I’ll focus on two things:

      • The amount of work you have done according to my requirements
      • The effectiveness of your content and format design

Please be aware that in addition to these weekly modules, your final project will be graded as a whole separately when completed.