Okay this has gone through multiple stages of my trying to figure out how to do this. Creating the timeline itself wasn’t a problem (the only thing I was running into was making sure images were coming up), but embedding it into the site was. WordPress doesn’t allow Timeline on here because of iFrame. Once I figured this out, which help from Shannon who gave me some very helpful hints on where to look, I was able to find that using the HTML block rather than the embed block. Now that that’s figured out, here are two Timelines I made.
Author: Haley
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Post 5: Troubleshooting
Troubleshooting was definitely something I thought was really scary at the beginning of this. Although as I learned more about it I realized it’s mostly just gathering up as much information as you can to recreate the problem and then working backwards from there. That’s what I did when I purposely broke my site by changing the URLs.
What I Did
At the start of this endeavor, once I changed my URLs in the general settings menu, my site looked like this:
Site Homepage 
Site Dashboard I ended up not Googling anything, as I knew what created the problem in the first place. I knew that the problem stemmed from the URLs being changed, as well as they were changed in the general settings section of the dashboard. From there, I found the new general settings link and and to search a bit to find where I could change the URL again. At this point I’ll admit I ran into a problem because I initially typed in the correct URL wrong. Once I saved the page with the incorrect URL, it lead me to another “This site can’t be reached” page. Simply going back to the page I started at didn’t work because it would revert back to the URL with a typo, so I had to re-login to my dashboard on a separate tab. Only then was I able to type in the correctly spelled URL and fix the problem.
Reflection
Looking back, before I started this it never occurred to me that I could simply work backwards from the problem. Knowing that helped me figure out how best to fix the problem.
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Post 4: Accessibility
What have I learned?
I learned today that I didn’t really think about accessibility before today, especially how it actually helps other people in the long run. I didn’t know that specific hyper links should have a meaningful word attached rather than just “Here”, something I’m very guilty of. I always thought it looked neater but I can now understand how there may be some confusion with where the hyperlink is placed if it’s not labelled correctly. I also didn’t know that there were specific plugins designed to make the website more accessible which is really helpful and something that I fully intend on using often. Lastly, I didn’t know that accessibility was something that companies could be sued over and I find that very interesting, although helpful in the way that it enforces accessibility.
Questions
I think if I absolutely had to think of a question, I would ask how one could install a website reader and how those work, especially with getting access to the alternative text. I personally rely more on reading than hearing because I have a tendency to not process words that well if they’re spoken too fast or I’m not ready, so seeing the reasoning behind something I wouldn’t normally use seems like something I should do.
Final Thoughts
I’ve gone through all of my pages and posts to make sure I don’t have any naked links, or photos without alternative text, or colors too close together that may be difficult to read. Using the accessibility reader was really interesting, especially seeing what it counted because things like comments and the users icons, things I can’t change, are flagged because the colors might blend in and I can’t add alternative text. But overall everything seemed to check out and I ended with a 95%, including the things I personally can’t change.
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Post 3: Another Site?
This week, I was able to create another website at sites@UMW. If you would like to check it out you can find the link here.
Now, upon spending some time on sites@UMW I’ve been able to form my own opinion about it but I don’t think I will share it here. There are some stark differences between the two. Appearance, for example, on sites@UMW is severely limited. A user will only have a sample of a few themes to choose from for their site, compared to the hundreds available on Domain of One’s Own. I think this serves as a good example for the overall differences between the two websites. Domain of One’s Own will give the user more control and options when it comes to the site and what’s on it (like themes for the appearance and specific tools for posts and pages), sites@UMW doesn’t have as many options to use or even specific plugins to add. They are, however, similar in the ways that the user can customize their site.
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Post 2: Site Building & Experimentation
The category I created to start organizing my posts is titled “training updates”, as I hope to put all of the assigned training and activities into that category, and perhaps bigger projects into another. The new category is pictured below.
Training Updates Category Page Unfortunately, my theme doesn’t come with a sidebar so I was unable to customize it at all. However, I was able to add the link to the training course onto the homepage (It’s linked into the menu page “DKC Training Page”).
DKC Menu The plugin I activated for my site is the HD Quiz plugin because I thought it would be fun to test any of this site’s visitor’s knowledge on me. Go ahead and take it and see what you remember about me from my homepage!
Conclusion
While I wasn’t able to play around with the sidebar because the theme I have doesn’t have a sidebar, I was able to explore my options when it came to plugins and ended up finding one that lets me add interactable quizzes which I thought was really fun and interesting. The quiz is available on this post so feel free to give it a shot! Some things that I’m most looking forward to learning about (either by myself or through an appointment) are graphic design, infographic tools, and maybe 3D modeling? I have blender on my laptop and my plan was to teach me how to use it, so I might use that as an excuse to finally make the jump and do it. Either way, any kind of digital design I’ve always found interesting, and while it might not be something I want to go into in the professional world, I think having a proficiency in it will prove a good use of my time.