Production: The Logo

Eliana had the responsibility of creating the logo. She created the logo on Photoshop and kept us updated on her progress.

Below are the screenshots of the different designs for the logo and the final one. I was there as she created the final logo so I can offer some insight into how we reached the final design.

This is a screenshot of the various designs Eliana came up with on Photoshop. She also tried out different fonts and made a note of the name of each font.

 

When Eliana showed me this a few days, I liked it because I thought it was cute and quite humorous but when I put it on the website, it didn't match the with the vibe so me and Eliana went back to the drawing board and came to the conclusion that the plane was the problem.
   

When reviewing the previous logo, me and Eliana agreed that in order to make the logo more sophisticated, we have to get rid of the blue smoke and change the plan completely. We downloaded a plane from Google Images and then proceeded to change the colour and wheel size to avoid copyright. I then changed the colour of the plane to white and then deleted the old plane, and replaced it this this one. I changed the colour of the font to white and Eliana then tilted the plane to make it look like the "T" was a runway and the plane was lifting off. 

Production: Creating the Menu

Creating the menu proved to be a difficult challenge as I had never done it before on WordPress and needed the help of various forums.

I used this link to create my custom menu: http://en.support.wordpress.com/menus/#creating-a-custom-menu

To create the menu, I did the following steps:

1. Click on "Appearance" and then "Menus" on the left hand side of the dashboard.
2. Click on "create a new menu" and then name the menu. I named mine "My Menu 2". 
3. I then scrolled down to "Menu Settings" and chose to have the menu as the "Top Primary Menu".
4. I then searched for the pages I had created earlier and clicked on "Add to menu" so that they would become tabs on the menu.
5. I then re-ordered the pages to appear on the menu as I wanted them and then clicked on "Save menu".
6. I clicked on "Visit site" to see the menu displayed and voila! 

The finished menu: 

A screenshot of the menu creation page.

Production: Creating the Posts, Categories and Pages

WordPress is an easy to navigate so it wasn't hard creating the posts, categories and pages. I did all of that with relative ease however the main issue was linking the posts to the right pages. I started creating the posts  for each travel destination and so far I have Cyprus, Barcelona and New York and hope to add more as I go along.

When I created the New York page, I couldn't figure out how to attach the post to a page so after scrolling through many forums, I finally figured out that in order to make a post show up on a specific page, I had to create the page names as "Categories" as well.

After I had done this, I logged into the New York post, scrolled down to where it said "Categories" and ticked the "City" category.

I then double checked to see if this had worked, which it had, and then proceeded to create posts and categorize them accordingly.

There is a screenshot of the process:

Ticking the "City" category to make sure the New York post appears on the right page. 

Creating the posts is easy on WordPress, all I had to do was click on "Add new" post and I was on my way and it was the same process with the pages, I clicked on "Add new" and proceeded to write what I needed to.

A screenshot of the "Pages" section of the site.

A screenshot of the "Posts" section of the site. 

Production: Presentation

Link to the presentation we did on Prezi for when we had to present our website's progress to the class:

http://prezi.com/ftecsag24g-w/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy

Producton: The Webpages

During one of our group discussion in the editing suite, Lawrence pointed out that we should not make our travel site like typical sites and that the site should, in some way, reflect our own personalities and the types of holidays we like going on.

That is where we got the idea to create 3 distinct pages that, in a way, reminded me of Earth, Rain and Fire:

Party
Experience
City

Within each page, the audience will find our own personalities shining through so we wanted to create posts that would cater to each of our personalities and the personalities of our readers.

Eliana contributed heavily to the Experience and Party page,  I contributed to the Experience and City page and Lawrence contributed to all by making videos that reflected the party scene and a video montage of the beach scene.

We felt that by categorizing each page associated with a vibe and emotion, we would be offering our viewers the ability to roam around the site without knowing what to expect like other sites.

Below are some snapshots of each page:

Screenshot of the City page.

Screenshot of the Experience page.

Screenshot of Party page.

Production: Second and Third Day of Shooting

Having learnt from our mistakes in regards to the equipment, filming was easier. We filmed on the 3rd  and 5th of March as I had gone away for a few days to attend a family function in Norway. I notified the group weeks in advance that I would be absent for 5 days and they were okay with it. 

I told them that they are more than welcome to film some interviews in my absence but Lawrence and Eliana both said that it would be better to do it as a group. We decided to film without leaving many days in between because the weather was nice and more students were around.

Below are pictures from our 2nd and 3rd day of shooting: 

Myself interviewing a student. 

The Panasonic camera we were using attached to the tripod. 

Shooting ourselves on the 5th floor of one of the main university buildings. 

Lawrence asking me the questions we had created for the interview. 

Production: WordPress & HostGator

Last semester,  I used Adobe Dreamweaver CS6 to create y website for which the link can be found here:

 http://studentnet.kingston.ac.uk/~K1109528/

Personally, I found it hard to get to grips the Dreamweaver's features as it was so new to me and I had to learn a lot in such a short space of time. To help me, I found online tutorials that allowed me to create the website from scratch but I encountered a lot of technical issues that I could not solve because I was not an expert.

This time round, my group and I felt that it would be better to develop the website further on WordPress so as to make use of the templates already available and useful plugins such as the gallery plugins and social media plugins to enhance the website. 

I created a WordPress account on 28th February along with the HostGator account. I chose to host on HostGator because it was easy to use and it was recommended to me by people who host their own websites through it.

Here are some screenshots of the HostGator and WordPress subscription e-mails. I have hidden the username and password of each account to protect the website.

HostGator e-mail.

HostGator welcome screen. Easy to navigate with clear options.

WordPress dashboard. Easy to navigate again and not too complicated. 

WordPress e-mail.