Source: Pexels

13 / 2 / 2019

WEEK 1: This week, I was given the task to produce my very own website using WordPress (or any other programs I choose). It will be used to document my progress throughout this module in a weekly format.

To set up my website, I first began by setting my URL, selecting my blog privacy as public, and naming my site to Digital Fabrication. Then I moved on to choosing an overall theme for my website. I explored with mostly minimal and clean themes such as Fara, Tracks and Spun. 

For example with the theme Fara, I decided not to use it because of the limitations of editing the post meta on my homepage. It shows the author, description, and dates on every post made which is quite repetitive and disrupts the overall aesthetics of the page.

I’ve selected Cubic as my current theme because of its clean, clear and minimal design.

For the menu, I’ve added an ‘About Me’ page – where I’ve included a picture and a short introduction of myself; as well as ‘Weekly Posts’ to display my weekly updates and documentation. I’ve also included ‘Home’ on the menu for easy navigation. I have also created the categories: Design, CAD and Programming, which I will update accordingly further on the course.

Since due to how my theme is designed, all my posts are displayed as square thumbnails on the homepage – I’ve so far made two illustrations as the thumbnails for Week 1 & 2.
 

Moreover, I’ve also activated Custom CSS from the plug-ins page. I’ve done minimal coding with this which includes changing the color overlay when the cursor hovers a post’s thumbnail; hiding entry date of posts on the homepage (keep a minimal design); removing featured image on the post page; removing the grey header box underneath the title of a post.

Overall, I find WordPress quite easy to use once I’ve gotten used to how it works. I’m definitely going to experiment more with my website design and how to make it better, especially playing around with custom CSS to customize the design of the existing theme and also adding more interesting elements to my website.