WordPress is an awesome tool that a person can use in order to blog.

So what’s blogging?

Blogging is stored information by use of words, pictures, sounds and/or videos that a person can use to discuss absolutely anything they’d like online. It’s a type of social networking where ideas can be shared as often or as little as they want, whether for business or personal use.

There are various tools available online that one could use for blogging, but our focus has been primarily on WordPress. One of the primary things I noticed between WordPress, Freehostia and Amazon Web Services was it’s ease of use. Freehostia and Amazon Web Services are for bloggers that have a lot more technical experience, especially when it comes to coding. With WordPress, just about anyone can create a blog, whether they have development experience or not.

Aspects of WordPress

WordPress is composed of:

• Themes – This is what provides all of the front end styling of the blog site. Here you can play around with things like font styling, colors and widget locations. All of this can be done without ever having to adjust the backend of its structure (something that also distinguishes it from tools like Freehostia).
• Posts/Pages – Posts are what make up the blogging aspect of the site. These are usually informational updates about whatever topic of discussion the user desires. These posts can be categorized and archived in the site. WordPress pages are a little different because they’re usually specific to static content or information – The “About Me” or “Contact Us” page are perfect examples. They cannot be dated or categorized the way posts can.

• Plugins/Widgets – Plugins offer new functionality to the WordPress site – like direct editing of the PHP code. Widgets provide new, small, interactive features to your site. Things like menus, social icons and recent post boxes are all examples of widgets that can be used to make your blog more functional. Easier yet, they require no code experience.
• Security/Users – In order to stay secure with WordPress, it’s important for users to keep their themes and plugins up to date – iThemes Security is a sufficient tool for this. Users should make sure they have strong passwords when entering their blog, and manage the amount of users and admins are available. Each user has a different role and responsibility. These roles can include: editing, subscribing and contributing. All in all, its important to keep these things secure.

Web Frameworking

A web framework is designed to support the development of web applications like web services, web resources and API’s. These offer a standard way to build and deploy web applications. They also help with database access, contemplating, code reuse and session management.

Bootstrap

Bootstrap is another tool that a user can use to easily create responsive websites. Predifined classes can be used to create multi column layouts. Other layouts, navigation bars and other components can be created – even without writing any JS code. The use of Boostrap is nice because it can save users time, the features are responsive, it’s easy to use, design is consistent, it’s open sourced and compatible with browsers.

Also, HTTPS is HTTP with encryption. The difference between the two is that HTTPS uses SSL to encrypt normal HTTP requests and responses and way more secure.

Howdy, and welcome to my blog! My name is L’Oreal, and I’m a student at Gwinnett Technical. I’m pursing a degree in web design and development, but my goal is to get into UX/UI Design.

So far my favorite courses during my program were Photoshop and Web Development. Both classes gave me the opportunity to be creative, and introduced me to the world of UX, which I originally knew nothing about.

In fact, when I was taking Web Development, we had to create an e-commerce website. Since I come from a rich Caribbean background, I chose to create a site that was all about freshly prepared Jamaican meals delivered straight to your door. My professor really enjoyed the final project – in fact she thought it belonged to an actual company! Based on my personality and presentation of the site, she suggested that I look into UX design. After doing the research I thought, this is more so where I belong for sure. Thus, my journey begins.

Feel free to check out the site. http://lorealmoore.info/1510/final/index.html

I need to create a portfolio for some personal projects that I have in mind, so I’m looking forward to this class for the purpose of creating one that I can use in UX.