Decision

I have finally decided on my website topic! I am going to go with the curly hair site. So now I guess I have to start thinking about the layout and design of the site...

One of the fundamental decisions I have to make is whether to make the site female-oriented. More than likely, I will attract more female visitors. However, I don't want to repel any male visitors who might want tips, etc. for their own hair.

After looking at some of the copyright readings on digital images, I am a little worried about where I will find images to use on my site. I wanted to include pictures of famous curly-haired people/characters, but I don't know if it would be too involved to get permission.

Considering Curly

I am still trying to decide on the topic of my final website. I am leaning towards the curly hair site. Here is an example of a site devoted to curly hair:

naturallycurly.com

I think some possible pages would include a page about my personal experiences with curly hair, a page of haircare tips, a page on resources (books, websites, etc), a page on curly hair in our culture (celebrities, art, etc), and/or a page with salons that specialize in curly hair. I think on the homepage, I would have a quote and pictures of famous curly-haired people (that I am allowed to use!)

Possible New Topic

I think I have decided against the idea of a family tree website. I would feel uncomfortable putting biographical information and photographs of my family on the internet without their permission. (I have a HUGE family. Just to give you an idea, my paternal grandmother had 10 siblings and my grandfather had 8).

I did come up with another possible topic: curly hair. I have naturally curly hair, which for most of my life, has been a nuisance. I read a book a few years ago that helped me begin to like my hair. I think other people with curly hair would appreciate websites with haircare tips, links to salons that employ curly hair experts, product reviews, testimonials, and resources like that. I would definitely include some information about the book I read because I think it is a great, positive starting point.

So at this point, I am trying to decide between the cooking website (with the help of all the useful comments I have recieved) and the curly hair website. Any opinions?

Website Thoughts

Although I do not yet have a topic for my final website, I have been thinking about the format and structure I want to use. Obviously I would like to have a home page, on which I would like to put some images (not too many) that are linked to pages devoted soley to the subjects of those images. If I do the family site, each picture could be a family member (probalby the "head" of a new family tree). Or else I could do an interactive family tree on my home page.


If I do the cooking site, I could have a picture of a recipe box that would link to a page with recipes (which would maybe have linked categories of recipes). Other links could include other cooking/recipe sites I like, cooking/ingredient tips, and recipe books I use a lot (citations or something).


Either way, I like the idea of sketching the layout and navigation of the site before I start working on it.

Xhtml & Website

I am usually not a technical person, but I am actually getting the hang of creating pages through Xhtml. It is frustrating to have to re-save everything when I have made a minute mistake, but it is satisfying to see the final product.
The final website project does not seem so scary right now. I am glad we went over this in class because I think this is one of those skills that is best learned through hands-on experience.
My favorite is inserting links. (is that sad?) What about everyone else?

Final Website

I am having a hard time thinking of an original and interesting topic for my final website. I know a lot about cooking, but there are so many cooking websites out there already. I think that would be a little boring.

Then I was thinking about my family's genealogy, but I don't know if that would have a wide enough audience. I guess anyone who is related or is doing family research would be interested, but I don't know.

Gardening

This past weekend I did some gardening. I was at first afraid to do anything with the garden because it is not really mine. (My boyfriend and I are renting the place from a friend who is in the military.) However, because it's a condo, I was kind of forced to. Apparantly, leaving the garden the way it was would have been unacceptable to the condo people. (This made me a little angry at first!) I do like gardening though, so I was actually happy to have an excuse to buy plants.

We ended up only buying 4 flowers and two herb plants (they were more expensive than I had expected). We also bought some soil and a cheap shovel from Dollar Tree (it was made of metal, so I trusted it!) The job turned out to be more involved than we had expected because the dead plants we removed had spread their roots everywhere. They were not easy roots to remove either. They looked like ginger roots or something. I was getting really frustrated because everytime I moved one out of the way, I would find another cluster about 4 inches away. It had established an extensive network down there! In the end, we removed as many roots as we had to and planted the flowers. The Dollar Tree shovel just barely made it. It is bent so much now I dont think it will work again.