Blogs
Creation of the Website: Some Reflections. -
Creating a website for a mythical organisation as a beginner was a wonderful experience. The first challenge was to choose the kind of institution I want to create the website, and what role such website will play in the promotion of the opted organisation. Hence, after careful thought, I decided to create my website on community library that solely depend on community contributions and well wishers. In order to continue receiving support from community members, the library has to market itself to the user population. The creation of a library website, therefore, is one of the marketing strategies of the library Management.
In creating the homepage layout, many things came to my mind as to what should be included in the home menu bar. The structure of the website, of course was more dictated by the template I used. However, my focus was to help users get much information about the library, its aspirations, the quality of its services, the various departments , how users can utilise its services, its information retrieval system, and how they as community members can also contributes through donations and volunteering as an added value to the running of the library.
To achieve my objectives, web-pages were created using drop-down menus under broad terms found on the top home menu bar, which are: ‘About us’, ‘Departments’, ‘Library catalogue’, ‘Users Information’, and ‘Support the Library’. You will also find Links and Contact us on the same menu bar. The titles of these web-pages are also found below the welcome page on the home page as keywords or hyperlinks. For users who are not familiar with browsing drop down menu pages can simply click on any of these keywords to navigate within the web-pages. I was able to write an apt content on some of the pages, and for some, a description of what is expected to be there was indicated. On the whole, although there were limitations, among the strengths of the software used includes easy capability to upload photos and files from PC, and the creation of hyperlinks. Drawbacks: There were some difficulties encountered in using webnode template to create this website. These include: · Difficulties to insert Logo you want, and where you want it to be; · The front page image of the template cannot be easily changed or replaced by self-created image; However, I was able to add a photo from creative common to the front page image, to give it a reflect image of a library website. · Creating an online registration form was a difficult task. I was able to create an online form and a quick poll which might not be user friendly because of the limitation of the software program; · Changing the colour too was impossible for me and so I have to maintain the same colour of the template. NOTE: Pictures uploaded on the photo gallery, are personal photos taken by me during a study tour of different libraries in London.