Content Management Systems

   A content management system is a web application that ensures the ease of creating and managing a website, for people who are not web designers. Usually a CMS is made up of two parts, the CMA element and CDA. The CMA allows the creator of the site to customize it without having to know how to code HTML. The CDA element takes the information and changes the creator made and keeps it updated. Some of the most widely used CMS programs are Wordpress, Joomla and Drupal. All three of these CMS are free and have great advantages and disadvantages based on skill level.

 
   Wordpress was released by Matt Mullenwegg in 2003 and has by far the most users, due to it's easy installation and choices for customization. As it is the most popular CMS, Wordpress has the most themes and plugins. It can be tailored to create a website or a blog. Wordpress is a highly recommended CMS for beginners. Users of Wordpress are not required to have any skill in coding in PHP and HTML. A giant advantage to Wordpress, is that Wordpress will host sites from it's own server.


   Drupal was created in 2001 by Dries Buytaert. Like Wordpress, Drupal also offers a large amount of plugins. Out of "The Big Three", Drupal is considered the most technologically advanced and has the most flexible CMS. Users with at least a basic basis of knowledge in HTML, PHP and other programming languages have more control and flexibility considering customization and technicality in Drupal. Due to it versatility, Drupal fits the size and concept of any website.

   Joomla is the largest CMS for commerce and corporate sites. It kind of runs down the middle of Wordpress and Drupal. It does not require the amount of technical skills Drupal has and doesn't have as many themes and plugins as Wordpress, but is still a smooth operating CMS. Joomla makes it the easiest to set up a a social network or an online store. Joomla is the best CMS for those who desire a more powerful CMS than Wordpress, but want something easier to manage than Drupal.




Sources: Website Set Up, Tech Target

Storytelling vs. Reconciliation

   We tend to listen with our fingers in our ears, meaning people only hear what they want to. It is all to easy to dismiss someone's opposing opinion with a simple "you're wrong", but in order to understand anything, we must listen and understand the opposition. Ever since we were little, our teachers and parents have taught us there are always two sides to every story. This valuable lesson plays an important part in workaday life.

 The death of Michael Brown was a tragic event, as well as the proceeding unrest in Ferguson. The police are still trying to piece together the broken shards of what happened, but it is clear there are two sides. Some say Michael Brown had his hands up and was fleeing Officer Wilson, while others object that Brown was a dangerous, posing threat to the Officer. The media undoubtedly showed bias to one side or another. There were very few reporters and writers that maintained an objective stance on the whole of the situation. This brings about questions surrounding the future of news media outlets. If any of these outlets cease to preserve the smallest bit of objectiveness they have left, who is there left to trust?
   A few weeks ago, my e-Comm teacher told us that he sometimes prefers the BBC website as a news source, rather than sites like CNN or The New York Times. He then went on to say that the BBC often has a more unbiased and objective view than any American news media outlet. Is this what happens when we feel like we can't trust our own news sources? Do other countries find America's stories about their own country, less biased?
   When a story or event blows up globally, it is everywhere. Proof from campaigns like "STOP KONY 2012" show how fast a story can spread, especially if promoted over social media. The video and posters for this campaign spread like wildfire, but after a couple days it became apparent that the "STOP KONY 2012" campaign was not 100% truthful. Despite the "one-sidedness" of stories being spread over social media, their rapid spreading can be an incredible tool if used right. When the revolution and uprising in Syria began, social media became a more useful tool than anything else. The residents, rebels and refugees of Syria used social media expose what was happening — that is before the Syrian government shut them down. Even thought the exposure of the unrest was brief, it was enough to get people's attention and take action.
   Social media has become and incredible tool for situations like those in Syria, but some countries do not have this luxury. China, and some other Asian and Middle Eastern countries do not have access to social media. Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, even Google is blocked. This is not because any of the countries are in a rural area or underdeveloped, but because the government decides what they want the people to see. For America this is a terrifying thought, and makes us wonder what kind of news China is fed. This proves that the levels of "bias-ness" have also flooded into politics.

   While the future of news media outlets is not set in stone, it is certainly headed in the wrong direction if it continues on it's current path.

 Peace in Ferguson - Casey Neistat

Index Revision

   In class, we were told to make an index site. This site would act as a page for links to out other projects, blog, etc. When our site was done, we were then told to evaluate each other's site on a scale from 1 to 4. This rating was used to rate its following of CARP and its use of defaults. A critique about my site that stuck out to me was concern about aligning the logo on the left side. They suggested switching the logo and the nav links so the nav bar's logo wouldn't overlap with the banner. I wondered why I hadn't thought of that and changed it immediately. When evaluating other classmates' sites, I didn't want to be harsh, but I wanted to remain truthful. To balance out the negatives of some critiques, I also added in a comment or two about something I liked. I tried to focus on being constructive rather than just stating what I didn't like. I tried to give suggestions and solutions to solve quick fixes.

   The other critique that stuck out to me talked about the "current projects" icons. They said that looked unfinished and unpolished. I really couldn't disagree, as they were unfinished. I wasn't entirely sure what kind of graphics I wanted to make for that section, so I threw together some flat design graphics and hoped it look decent. It was decent, but looked unpolished compared to the top part of the site. Changing them, I sampled colors from the banner and lowered the opacity. I then took the colors and layered them over a graphic of a crumpled piece of paper, for texture. I thought having the white part of the graphic filled in came off as a little heavy so I changed them to be just the outline. Making these changes, gives the site more of a put together and collective look.


 

Google X Reveals Drone Testing

 News recently broke that Google X (a facility dedicated to technological advancements) have been testing drones as a part of Project Wing. Drones are essentially "flying robot planes" that deliver goods by air. Google X have not been permitted to test on US soil, so the testing has taken place in Queensland Australia. Google X states that the long term purpose of these drones would be to provide immediate relief to people in the event of a natural disaster. The Federal Aviation Administration has kept tight reigns commercial drone use, but is slowly and carefully, looking to change.

   Using drones to provide relief to victims of natural disaster, or residents in rural areas sounds great, but this is not the first thought that comes to mind to most Americans. Most people are excited over the idea of ordering a pizza, or something from Amazon, and receiving it immediately. Amazon has also been extensively working on their own drone delivery service, Amazon Prime Air. Although the potential cost savings and job opportunities would be great, questions about the weather and safety regulation can't help but arise. It will be a few more years before "ship by drone" is the next option after "express shipping", but Google X has been developing and regulating this project for 2 years now. Instead of flying cars, we could have flying drones.

watch the video here

3 Sites, Then and Now

The first image is ebay in 2001. The first distinguishable difference between the old site and the current site, is there is now no side bar. ebay used to be solely an auction site, so a list of categories were crucial. A revised list of categories now resides at the top of the site and in a drop down menu. ebay essentially kept their same color scheme and logo with a few tweaks. The code for ebay has also changed a bit. Shown below, there is a meta tag for key words. Some words have been eliminated, but the sequence of the words have also changed. Orginally "ebay"was the last key word with "auction" being the first. Now it switched around, with "ebay" as the first and auction being the "last".

ebay 2001

ebay 2014

The next site is Twitter in 2006. The layout have significantly changed along with the logo. Twitter is now recognized by just a bird. Also Twitter is now mainly concentrated on as an app. The color scheme has also gone through many shades of blue and now shows no trace of chartreuse.. The homepage of Twitter used to show recent status updates as well. I remember when twitter first came out, I wondered why anyone would join a website based on status updates, now it is one of my most used apps. The code for Twitter used to be heavily based on separate divs, but is more prominent in javascript.

            

Twitter 2014

Twitter 2006

IMDb has continued to keep up with it's usability and layout, but now adding more graphics. Photos and graphics used to take ages to load, but now with faster internet they aren't a problem. The color scheme on the 2014 site has a more polished feel to it then the other one along with a more polished logo. IMDb has relatively kept their same logo, only changing the font and size. In the code, the old site had a lot of usage with tables. almost everything was kept in tables. In the new site, they heavily use iframes, giving users easy access to movie trailers and graphics.

IMDb 2002

IMDb 2014

Using sites like Wayback Machine, or any internet archive, give designers and curious minds alike a look back into the past. Internet archives have become a "yearbook" for graphic and web design. It's interesting and somewhat self satisfying to see how far design has come. It gives a chance to laugh at the earlier stages and compare sites to where they are now.

Extreme Homepage Makeover

MVHS 

    Over the past week I have been redesigning the home page of Mountain View High School (shown to the left). I decided to emulate the style of Design Republik's home page as I liked their clean and organized design as well as the color blocking. Mountain View had a nice banner, but the organization of the page was difficult to work with. The home page was essentially gobs of information with no structure. The site also lacked depth, and the gradient, embossed, drop shadow letters were begging to be redesigned. The site was not incredibly horrendous, but it did need to be updated into a more modern, appealing homepage.

Design Republik

  
 Flat design doesn't always work for everything, but I really liked the design of Design Republik. The site has attractive  minimalistic qualities and a user friendly layout (despite that it's in spanish). The color blocking is what caught my eye first and I thought that it would transfer well with  MVHS's red and blue scheme. My only concern with the colors was that the site might end up looking like The Fourth of July.

Logo Redesign

I worked on redesigning the logo first. I was a little unsure how to do a school logo utilizing a flat design esthetic, as most school logos are bold and have a lot of dimension and detail. The new school logo mimics Design Republik's logo quite well. I used the school's original "M" with the torro head in the middle, but added a plain white torro with a drop shadow in a plain black square. I kept the red and blue, but made the colors richer, to add some depth. The thin "Mountain View" offsets the bold "high school" as shown in Design Republik's logo. I decided to place the logo in the footer and in the slideshow photos.

Last Slide of Slideshow

Next I started on the site. I knew that I wanted to keep a slideshow on the front page. I thought this was a nice aspect of the original site. Design Republik also has slide show so I decided to add some graphics to the photos like they had. Finding photos for the slide show was a nightmare. I hoped that Mountain View would simply have a photo album on the site, but they don't. They do however have a separate pages for each school activity within pages of several other pages, and after you weave through that web you might be able to find a low resolution picture after you scroll all the way down (yeah, organization was a real issue). Weaving in and out of the MVHS's website was getting me no where so I took to google. I eventually found enough high quality pictures to use for the slideshow through random news articles they were in. I decided to add in the school's honor code in the slide show as well, which I think looks nice. The slideshow was created using java script.

Redesigned Home Page

The original school site lacked a lot of depth and since I was using a flat design approach to the redesign, I wasn't sure how to add depth. I decided on adding a drop shadow to the entire website container, which helps the page stand out a bit more. I condensed the 3 "blobs" of information they had on the front page into a bar above the footer, mimicking Design Republik's. This condensed the content and made it easer to navigate. I thoroughly enjoyed this project. It made me take a more structured approach to creating a website and mimicking other sites is good practice. 

Path: Taylor, Mallory > MVHS > index

HS Website Redesign

I will be redesigning Mountain View HS, website (and logo) in the style of Design Republik's website.

 Mountain View HS 

 Design Republik

Parallax In Web Design

    Parallax scrolling is a technique used in computer graphics, mainly video games. Parallax scrolling is done by creating background images that move slower than foreground images. This create an illusion of depth and interest. Now this scrolling technique has moved into the world of web design. With web design the effect occurs when various elements on a page move at different speeds. Websites that use parallax scrolling intrigue users and enhance the visual appeal.

    Despite the hype around parallax scrolling, some designers have issues with it. It is arguable the parallax scrolling can take away the functionality of a site or its usability. Since the whole site on one page, the amount of data is a concern too. Users may get tired of waiting for the page to load and hit "x" before they can even see the first heading. 

   Most of the time parallax sites are used for story telling, for informing. A lot of parallax site use symbols and images rather than large chunks of text. A website to enroll you child in school will most likely not have parallax scrolling, but a portfolio might. Adding the element of parallax scrolling is good for catching the user's attention. It creates and element of fun and can be looked a quickly. 

    Most parallax sites are create through a mix of html and javascript or jQuery. These computer programming languages aid in the animation of the scrolling. There are a variety of tutorials and even certain plug-ins that make it easy to create a parallax scrolling site.

Sony

The Beast

CASA Superhero 5k Run: First Endorsement Website

     About 8 weeks ago, my friend Erin and I were approached by CASA of Kansas City. CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocates) is a wonderful organization that assists in legal cases involving abused children, giving them a voice in court. We were asked to create a website for their first ever Superhero 5k Run. A meeting was set for the date December 5th. It was a little nerve racking, this being our first endorsement project, but the women we met with could not have been more kind. We met with Di Topjon, the Events & Communications Manager for CASA of Johnson & Wyandotte Counties and Kris Mattern, their Marketing Chair. They informed us that the Event Planner for Jackson County, Lara Klover, could not make it to the meeting, but we would surely be in contact with her. Our first matter of discussion was when they would like the site to be up and how we would go about doing a WordPress site. Erin and I had never used WordPress, but liked the idea of experimenting with it. Also using WordPress allowed Erin and I to work on the website outside of the classroom. After the meeting our teacher Mr. Olson explained the bare bones of WordPress and let us go from there! 

     After messing around with WordPress, we became a bit more comfortable with it and started to add content. We received many emails regarding graphics, content, website layout and were encouraged to ask questions if in need of clarification (We asked many questions). This project was presented to us about 2 weeks before our winter break. We vowed to work on the site at least a couple hours while we were off. This would've gone as planned, but the domain name the server we had the site on expired over break. This prevented us from working on the site outside of the classroom. When we got back from break, Mr. Olson let us know what was going on. While we weren't able to work on the site outside of school, we were still able to work on it in school. This now meant that we would have to stay after school if we wanted to get hours in for the site. Staying after school actually helped us though. It gave us more time to marinate in a creative environment and we eventually changed the theme of the site. The theme we had changed the site to looked great and motivated us to work on the site even more. Erin had conflict with staying after school so I messed around with the design aspect of the theme, while she focused her attention on entering content. 

  Mr. Olson and Kris Mattern pushed through the complications of transferring the site to a new host and the site went live on February 11th. Working on this Project was a great experience and boosted our confidence as designers immensely. Getting "real-world-experience" is helpful in that it required us to step up to the plate and take charge. All together we ended up spending 56 hours on the site. Erin worked for 26 hours and I worked 30. Working on the CASA Superhero 5k Run website was an incredible and much enjoyed experience. 

The Website: CASA Superhero 5k Run

Screenshots:

Alan Turing Receives Royal Pardon After 59 Years

   Alan Turing is a name often associated with the British man who was a mathematical genius, a key in the defeat of the Nazis in World War II. This same man was later chemically castrated for having homosexual relations and poisoned himself 2 years after. 59 years have passed, but in late December 2013 Turing received royal pardon from Queen Elizabeth II. Normally when a royal pardon is given the person at hand is innocent or the family requests it. Turing's conviction was not met with regards to any of these conditions. In July 2012, a bill was proposed to the House of Lords and passed three readings. Before the bill could reach the House of Commons the British Government decided to agree to the petition. Turning was granted pardon for his conviction of gross indecency. This took immediate effect.

   Alan Mathison Turing was born in London at the early start of the 20^th century. His intelligence was quite notable and was recognized early on by his instructors. Turing’s focus was solely dedicated to math and science. This created controversy at the school he attended as it focused heavily on the classical studies. Despite this he continued to advance independently with his studies outside of school. Alan Turing relished in the idea that he could solve and grasp complex problems. Since his youth it was obvious Turing thought like a scientist.

   After being educated as a undergraduate at King’s College Turing went on to earn his PhD from Princeton. After Princeton, he returned to Cambridge and began his work with the Government Code and Cypher School. The GC&CS created an extensive cryptanalytic facility that became essential in World War II. Turing was a key code breaker in the cryptanalysis of the Enigma, created by the Axis powers, specifically Germany. He deduced the indicator procedure used by the German navy and created a portable and secure voice scrambler codenamed Delilah. These are a few of many advanced aided by Turing which resulted in the defeat of the German Nazis.

   In 1946 Turing worked with the design of the Automatic Computing Engine (ACE) and even came up with his own revised design. In 1948 Turing was appointed a principal lecturer in the department of mathematics at the University of Manchester. In 1949 he started to work on software for the Manchester Mark 1. This was one of the earliest stored-program computers. During this time Turing began to work in the field of abstract mathematics. He developed his own experiment, which became known as the Turing Test. This experiment tested the issue of artificial intelligence. The Turing test was the idea that if a computer could fool a human into thinking it too was a human, the machine could “think”. A reversed form of this test is used widely online.

   About 3 years later, Turing formed a romantic relationship with a man named Arnold Murray. Through the result of a burglary the police acknowledged that Turing and Murray were romantically together and both men were arrested. At this time homosexuality was against the law. Turing felt no guilt for having a relationship with Murray and pleaded guilty. He agreed to undergo chemical castration as punishment. He was not allowed to continue his job with GC&CS, but was granted his job as an educator. 2 years after Turing was convicted his cleaner found him dead. It has been confirmed that the cause of death was cyanide poisoning. It is suspected he purposefully consumed an apple laced with cyanide in order to end his life.

   Turing has received much recognition for his work breaking the German enigma code and creating new programs. He was a remarkable man whose brilliant mind saved countless lives. The mathematical genius created the basis of modern computing. Not only was he in standing for a well deserved pardon, but he deserves to be remembered and recognized for his immense contribution to science.