I found this assignment to be incredibly frustrating, because it gave me unrealistic expectations as to what a college kid could do.
I read over all of the reading material and thought each concept was a no brainer.
And then I tried to implement it.
I had to close my laptop a few times because I felt I was spinning my tires deep in code I didn’t understand.
I’d look at the home page of my blog in disgust each and every time I reopened it.
I needed a reality check: I shouldn’t expect to click a few buttons and gaze upon a CNN-esque homepage. They’ve paid for their page to look a certain way, every element syncing up in harmony.
I found myself trying out the looks of different themes, settings within those themes, the coloring. Nothing made it look like what I envisioned it could.

I tried to change a few things, though; here’s what I managed to do:

1. Added more to my menu

-Instead of having just an “About Kimberly” tab, I decided to put news, features on it as well, as well as a search bar. Other news websites had a menu full of different tabs, so that’ll be something to continue to work on as I go throughout the class.

1. Made my pictures bigger along the left side of the page

-This is a pretty common occurrence and a consistent layout design for websites and newspapers alike. Just makes sense for me to continue to do that with my stories and posts from now on.

1. Added an external link to my blog

-My blog now has a link to my external website (one I have to pay for), just as a way to link it with to a satellite site. CNN does this often, with CNNMoney, as an example.

1. Saved white space by removing my page’s title

-Instead, I placed it in the header photo. The title header itself was taking up too much space and left a lot of white on the top of my blog page, so I decided to get rid of it.