My website!

3rd March 2011

Today I started my website for my newspaper company. I first had a quick tutorial on how to work iweb what seemed to be pretty basic and self explanatory. I began with the title of my paper at the top of the site. I wanted to match the colour of the title used in my newspaper on the website which i think is most important. Looking on local news paper sites such as The Portsmouth news, i could get an idea of what to aim for when creating my own. The style of the title of the paper was the same as on its news papers which made this most recognisable. Looking at the style of headings, image layout and links was a way of me taking these ideas as examples and being able to put my own ideas on my site.

After playing around with the title to make it look as similar as possible, by taking a sample colour of what i had used on indesign and matched it to the colour palette on iweb made this possible to look realistic and exactly the same. I started my sub headings. from looking on local newspaper sites i could see what sort of headings to write. such as News, sports, life style and jobs. But as i wanted to put my own ideas downinstead of taking influences from other sites, i decided to personalise the heading regarding my paper. This gave my newspaper company advertisement as well as being personal. I titled my headings as:

• Gazette New


• Gazette Sport


• Gazette Lifestyle


• Gazette Community


• Gazette Jobs

This makes my site personalised to the title company, and again will make it recognisable for residents in the area just like the feeling I get when i see the Portsmouth news title/ paper because i know and remember the paper.

I have now uploaded plenty of pictures which i canuse on my site. I took the image i had used on the front cover of my news paper and used it as part of one of the top stories to read about on the website. I then used a variety of pictures which represented different stories and i wrote a short sentence next to each of the images to give basic information about what the stories are about. I had seen that this technique had beenused on local news paper sites so i thought this would be good for mine. After deciding on final pictures and arranging them on the page to look nicely presentable I started on the next section which was about sports.

I took a variety of pictures which could be used under my sports section. Again i did the same for what i did for top stories, arranged the pictures onthe page and wrote a short sentence explaining the story briefly. The only problem with my sports pictures is that they look quite similar and mainly refer to foot ball. I have to take other pictures of other sports as people reading the paper may not be interested in football.

I have also done a weather section on my page as this is most common. I also did a weather section on my news paper so again it links to realism and the same information can be found on either. I included weather icons and gave a brief description of the weather. I arranged it across the page so it looked clear and easy to read. I wrote a short sentence next to the weather section stating if more information is needed is to click the link which will give a more detailed weather response.

I have included a advertisement for a subscription to Gosport Gazette were readers can subscribe to having their local news paper sent to their door daily. This is a good advertisement technique for the company and by looking at other sites its clear that this is a common advertisement for news papers. I placed a picture of this weeks Gosport Gazette front cover of the news paper to supplement the ad.

That is the majority of my first page of my website completed. I want to make small adjustments by turning some text in to hyper links and main menus turn in to a drop down for more information. I have included advertisements from other businesses as well as advertising how to advertise own businesses on the Gosport Gazette site. These are vital media elements for news papers as they create money and helpful towards readers.

This is what my first page of my web site looks like:

I could not capture the whole page of my website to show on here, so when i publish my final website later when it is fully completed, it will be easier and clearer to see all of it then.

I have now started my second page of my website.

I had an idea of what story to write from looking at picturesi have taken but not yet used in my project. I chose a picture i had taken of a man holding birds in the streets, i used the term used in media here, where mediation takes place. i took a picture and adapted it within a story what it nessercarily had nothing to do with. I decided on this picture and making a story about a local man who was respected in the area had died, and he had this gift of attracting birds to coem feed in his hands. I wasnt sure about this story at first, but after discussing it with the class they felt it worked really well and was the sort of story that was expected in a local paper.

So i decided to go with this! i first uploaded the picture at the top, then began to write the article below it. Not forgetting to include the five W's used in the opening paragraph. After writting the article and finalising it, I was pleased with this and glad it has worked. I included a smaller picture of the man at the bottom.

Today i am doing the left hand side of my website second page, where i am going to place advertisements and information about what else to findon the site.

Firstly i included to stories- this is an indication of what other top stories can be found on the website.

I then thought about the sort of advertisements i could use. I have just come back from a trip to Paris, where i took lots of pictures. So from that i thought about advertising the Eurostar to Paris, and the puting in a link on visits to Paris.

This could help me with later ideas when coming to create my poster.

I created this advertisement by capturing the Euro Star logo and placing it in my poster. This helps with aiding readers understanding.

After creating the advertisements, i though what else do news papers have? and i thought, search engines!!

From this i decided to create a job search engine, where readers could search for jobs via the Gosport Gazette. This was quick and easy to make, i used pinks here as i thought it contrasted well with other colours on my page.

I then created a link where readers could go on and see this weeks TV guide. I thought this was appropriate as i stated that a TV guide was included in my news paper, so I thought this would work well as i would be linking the news paper and website together.

I have now finished my website! I really like my second page as i think it works well with my news paper and website home page. This is what my second page looks like:

As the same as when i captured and uploaded my website front page, the second website page i have created couldnt show up either. So when i publish my finalised website look then to see all of the page.