Find us at Yourmidlands

Progress so far

It’s been a long time since the last blog so I will fill you in on the progress of the website and tell you about the coming weeks.

Research

I have been continuously researching and developing ideas for the layout and creativity of the website, after looking at competitions websites on the internet it became apparent that I needed to keep the website fresh, with clean lines and simple colours. To make sure the website was targeting both male and females Stacey and I decided to go with dark purple colours for the main bulk of the website, this colour stands out and also goes nicely with grey, silver and white colours.

Content

After continuous debate about the size of this project, we decided that as we only had a short amount of time in which to complete the website that we should aim the content at the youth in the Midlands area, there was already a working group ‘Catch 21’ doing a similar thing to us but from London, so by concentrating on one main area, now that being the Midlands, our podcast’s will be more direct and more suited to one direct group of people.

Talking to fellow students it became apparent that one student was completing an environmental website full of podcast’s for his project, so we have teamed up with him for this particular podcast to make it more interactive for the users of the website.

Productivity

After buying the domain name www.yourmidlands.com I have been getting used to using FTP to upload my website onto the web. I am currently in the progress of downloading all internet browsers so that I can actively test my website on all different platforms to make it accessible to all users, this has already brought up some layout issues when using Fire Fox instead of Dream weaver, all issues I need to address and tackle before the website goes live.

Things to think about:

As we are rapidly approaching launch date, I have started become aware of the needs and wants for a website such as this and have started to research now into making this website more and more interactive I am currently researching into :

§         Making this website into a community

§         Viral Blogging / Emailing this domain name

§         Viral Blogging/ Emailing information about the website to get user numbers up.

§         RSS feeds

§         News Scroller

There will now be, more than one weekly blog commencing from Friday 11^th April to update on progress, testing and so fourth.

Meeting 03/03/08

 Meeting Criteria: 

• Finalise Name
• Finalise Slogan
• Finalise layout
• Finalise Colours
• Talk about domain name
• Audio
• Content
• Talk about professional context
• Advertising

 Design 

The basis of this meeting was to define and finalise all of the designs elements of the website and to make sure that Stacey and myself were both thinking along the same line in terms of content and design.

After brainstorming all week, we were both still stuck for ideas for names of the website but decided to go with “Your Midlands”; making it both regional and personal. Although this doesn’t directly tell you that the website is based around political issues that are concerned with the youth of today we thought this name was simple and effective. By adding the slogan “Your Voice, Your Politics, Your Future” the viewer now should be able to realise that they can have their say on the matter in hand, “Your Voice”, that its an informative website dealing with youth politics “Your Politics” and why this website has been made, “Your future”. With the logo a funky regional map with the name of the website on it, the area of significance is once again mentioned.

 Professional Context 

In order to make sure that this website is both professional in the way it’s designed but also the process in which we went through to get to the final end stage. One of our main concerns was making sure that there is actually a need for our product, which, after speaking to a number of media professionals in different areas, they believe our idea is a worth while and interesting project, however as we want this website to actually be successful with people writing on the forums and getting actively involved in the website, we are still trying to look for a client in the media world, some one that would be able to give us a bit more guidance on what is expected from such a project – this is one area we are continuing to research into until we hopefully find some one willing to help.

 Advertising 

We also discussed the need for an advertising space on the website, just a small bar on the right hand side with maybe two or three adverts, whether they are simply flyers for other websites that promote the same ideas as we are. This is also another area we are looking more into.

 What needs to be done by the next time we meet: Marie: 

• Finish of CSS template
• Finalise Logo
• Design and make links
• Design and make header and footer
• Research audio for web
• Research into advertising
• Research and contact media professionals

 Stacey: 

• Finalise content
• Research content
• Talk to Sam about length of podcasts
• Research into advertising
• Research and contact media professionals

This week has all been about planning, researching, organising and more researching.

After an interesting tutorial it seemed that I may have been a bit laid back about the amount of research needed for such a project and so decided that all the researched needed to be completed by Friday 15^th February

This week I have been concentrating on gaining more information about the target audience age group 16-24 year old, I’ve been trying to gain a better understanding of what they would want from such a website.

To make sure I keep on track I’ve made a timeline of what I feel needs to be done in the coming weeks.

I have also been researching into a possible collaboration with the online website/company Catch 21 as a means of possible linking between pages as they too, promote political issue to deal with the youth of today.

 This is a blog that will be used to upload ideas, research and the progres of a final third year students working on making an online radio station for their end of year project.