Final Term Project

In the beginning of this semester, I never thought I would be able to create a website from scratch; however, for my final project in Writing for the Internet, I decided to create a website rather than an Interactive Fiction game.

Creating a website allowed for my creativity to come out not only with the layout and design of the site, but with what topic I wanted to create a site about. The ultimate goal of this project was to not make a website filled with content, but being able to put the knowledge I gained from class and the HTML books we used. With this project, I was able to work on the site outside of class and be able to have my friends perform usability tests to see how effective my layout and information was.

My website isn't to fancy because I feel that distracts the reader from the useful information I provide. My idea was to create a website specifically designed for single fathers raising daughters. I wanted to appeal not only to the fathers, but to the daughters as well for they can gain some knowledge and insight of how difficult it is for a single father to raise a daughter. The information provided would be from my own personal experience which would be more beneficial than a psychologist's opinion on a situation they probably never experienced.

As a woman who grew up only with her father from the age of 2 till I went off to college, I looked towards my father for advice as both a father and a mother. Experiencing a father raising a daughter first hand, I was able to see how hard it was for him to play both the father and mother role.

While doing the alpha testing, I was able to get ideas from other classmates as well as get tips on how to do something to my own site. While my site right was in the process of becoming visually attractive with fonts and backgrounds and other images, I still needed to fix the headline color because during my beta release, many of my classmates told me that the pink color was to distracting and overwhelmingly bright. I asked a question on my alpha testing blog about whether or not I should include a page that describes my personal experience with this subject and they all agreed that including my personal experience with this sort of situation would show a "success" story.

My goals for the final release of my site were to:

• find a better background picture - used a family-like background of father and daughter holding hands
  
• finish the "Awkward Situations" page - this was hard to write, but I was able to come through
  
• create a biographical page - originally it was to be short, but I couldn't stop talking about myself
  
• change the color of the headlines - changed from a bright, obnoxious pink to a blue
  
• clean up long paragraphs - used bullets to cut up the information
  
• and to appeal to both fathers and daughters - I hope so
  

I have succeeded in achieving all my goals. The hardest part was creating the biographical page about myself. I don't think you realize how hard it is to write about yourself.

Without further ado, Dads Raising Daughters is complete.

Here are blog entries about my progress of the term project:
Term Project Idea
Progress after a couple days of work
Almost There
And finally, my BETA release