Evaluation

Throughout this project I have been excited, intrigued and frustrated. I've been excited to learn a new software, this was my first time using WordPress and some things were easier to do than others. I enjoyed adding the photos, videos, news elements and styling the website how I think best suited the original website. A lot of what I was doing was trail and error because I was guessing how to do most it but I enjoyed this because that's how I personally learn to do things, play around with it. 

Looking back to when I first started I probably should have spent more time choosing and researching themes. I was so focused on finding one that had in particular elements that would work well for my site take the embedded video player for example, it made me forget about other things such as plugins that are mentioned on the brief, I just assumed they would work with the site I had chosen.

This is where things became very frustrating for me, because I chose a one page site this then limited me to not having seperate pages which I was aware of but I wasn't aware that the majority of my plugins wouldn't work without pages, sadly once I had figured this out it was too late to change my theme instead I have had to find different ways/ loop holes around these problems. 

Loop holes

The brief said our websites require a shop, a shop plugin requires pages which I am limited to, having said this when I install the plugin it works and when I preview the shop it appears this was a good sign to me that the shop is existing somewhere, though when I try to view the shop page within my website as a normal user the link in the navigation bar is inactive nothing happens. I thought if my page is showing within a preview page I'll just copy the link from that and add it to the navigation and this seemed to do the trick. The shop works as it should, the check out section works with built in PayPal. 

The same thing happened when I tried to add a booking system so I did the exact same thing and used the preview URL and this now works too. The calendar is within the booking system.

I struggled and tried everything to get the map on the homepage or a page of it's own, The lightbox map does work but this only appeared on my shop page which made no sense, I made the decision to leave the map on the shop page because i've come to the conclusion that it is better than nothing.

I decided to leave SEO and analytics until last because it makes sense to build the website first then focus on it. I did find learning about SEO very interesting because it's all about getting hits on your website and making sure your website link is appearing number 1-3 within search engines, I can take this information I have learnt about SEO and apply it to other website projects in the future. I already knew a lot about analytics through my own online work, this way i found it easy to link to google. 

Couldn't get working

the search bar is another frustrating plugin that I can't seem to get working on my home page, though I don't think my website necessarily  needs a search bar as everything is pretty self explanatory and easy to find also my user testing backs this. 

Colour Coordination

This is an appreciation post on the colour coordination of my website, everything is green and black and i think it works well. originally i was going to make it red to match youtube but then i thought it would be too dark. I made the opening video green to match the the rest of it and I'm pleased with how it has come out. 

Map

I really didn't want to but I had to add my map to the shop page i didn't personally choose this page it sets on this page automatically, I know it doesn't make sense to have it here but it's either on the shop page or no where. I would have much preferred it to be on the homepage but this didn't seem to be an option. I hope when it comes to grading i don't get down graded for this as it is beyond my control.

Home Page Header

Originally my home page was going to be an image slider with photos from past events, when the demo theme is shown it has a big heading with a little bit of writing under it, when it came to editing it by myself I couldn't figure out how to get this, I tried so many things which didn't work so instead i opted to have a video playing instead. I thought it would be a good idea to get clips of all the youtubers attending edit them together so they can explain the event themselves and also add footage of past events, I made this in just a few minutes and I think it works really well, I also have made it so it plays automatically when the user enters the site. 

example video: 

watch full video:

User Testing.

The feedback I got from the class mentioned "Event not immediately clear from the homepage" so i have included this in the questions with some other things that are worrying me such as the fact i don't have a search bar.

Questions:
How easy is it to find out what the Event is about?
What was your first impression of the website?
Find and Try to buy something from the shop, was this simple?
Try to find and navigate the news section, was this easy?
Is there anything you would consider changing to make it easier?
Does it bother you that there is no search bar?

user one: age 21
How easy is it to find out what the Event is about?
"I watched the video which played automatically and to find out more information simply I clicked on the about link which explained the event in more detail."

What was your first impression of the website?
"One word comes to mind 'fun' I kept scrolling and it seems there is always something happening, The opening video, checking out the news, watching youtubers videos"

Find and Try to buy something from the shop?
"Yes, this was a simple task I didn't have to stop and think about how to get to the shop as it was on the navigation, then buying something was straight forward too"

Try to find and navigate the news section, was this easy?
"This was easy though when I clicked on one of the news boxes I didn't think anything was going to happen as it took a a couple seconds to sort itself out but when it did i thought it was really cool"

Is there anything you would consider changing to make it easier?
"If I could change anything I would move the 'register and login' from off the navigation because it takes up a lot of room. Also I would make the tour dates section smaller."

Does it bother you that there is no search bar?
"I didn't even notice there wasn't a search bar, i don't think this website needs one, everything was so easy to find on my own."

Titles and sections

For a while I hadn't been able to figure out how to change title sections from the original theme ones. I have figured out how to change this by going into the  settings. In the Image below you can see that i have changed 'Gallery' to 'Line Up'.

I have added an 'About' section as the brief says the website requires one, I have put this right at the top of the website under the header, this way if a user comes to the website and isn't sure what it's for, then it would take a couple of seconds to find the about page by either scrolling down once or clicking the about tab.

Social Media Feed

My theme has a built in social media feed for twitter but it doesn't work as twitter needs to authorise it or send me some codes which would take too long so i have imported one tweet which digi tour has done and this seems to work for the time being.

Crit

This is the feedback I received from Crit.

Since this feedback I have changed my shop it works well now and I am very pleased with it. Though I haven't changed my homepage because I personally think it's fine and I believe when I do user testing it will support my theory.

line up

I have created a line up section to the site, by doing this I have changed the name of the gallery to line up and added photos of the talent attending. After I linked YouTube videos to the photos so when the user hovers over the image a video link will appear. 

analytics

I added an analytics system because the brief said one was needed but I think it's useful having an analytics system because I can see what people are navigating through the website and what they're clicking on most. 

https://wordpress.org/plugins/google-analytics-for-wordpress/

with google analytics I am able to go onto their site and look at the overview of the website, it tells you all different things to do with the site and i think it's very useful.

Theme I am Using.

The theme I have chosen to use is called Sonorama, This theme is a one page site, I want the website to stay one page but less cluttered like the original is. 

The main reasons why I have chosen this theme is because of the gallery area which I am going to use for a line up, in my wireframe I mentioned I wanted pictures then when you click on it an embedded video plays, the fact this theme does that makes it perfect for my audience. 

another reason why I like this theme is because i can add tour dates and a link to buy the tickets, there's social media links, twitter feed, header. 

it's also possible to create more sections of anything this way I can meet the brief with everything it requires.