Ancillary 1: Website

On this page, you will find all of my research and planning for my website. The order of posts on this page is earliest posts at the top and my most recent posts at the bottom of the page. I have put an image of my final website homepage and a link to the website at the bottom of this page as well as on my 'Home' page under my main final products.

Analysis of 3 similar websites:

What do you expect to see on a website?

• A main image is usually featured on the page.
• Many minor images.
• Captions under images.
• Company logo.
• Links to articles and things to buy like trainers for example.
• The layout is simple and easy to navigate around.
• A simple colour palette is used usually including Black and White.
• The use of text is limited.
• Small captions under minor images, linking to other places.
• A main headline is typically featured at the top of the page.
• A banner at the top of the page features a 'home' button and links to other sections of the website.

Website institution:

Below is a small brief about websites and some information on how thy are created and used:

"Web pages, which are the building blocks of websites, are documents, typically composed in plain text interspersed with formatting instructions of Hypertext Markup Language (HTML, XHTML). They may incorporate elements from other websites with suitable markup anchors. Web pages are accessed and transported with the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), which may optionally employ encryption (HTTP Secure, HTTPS) to provide security and privacy for the user. The user's application, often a web browser, renders the page content according to its HTML markup instructions onto a display terminal. Hyperlinking between web pages conveys to the reader the site structure and guides the navigation of the site, which often starts with a home page containing a directory of the site web content. Some websites require user registration or subscription to access content. Examples of subscription websites include many business sites, parts of news websites, academic journal websites, gaming websites, file-sharing websites, message boards, web-based email, social networking websites, websites providing real-time stock market data, as well as sites providing various other services."- Wikipedia

It is free to create a website, and the cheapest website with a domain name starts at £5. The price of a website can reach heights of £15,000 and above. This all depends on the style and how professional the website is. Also if you create the website yourself or if you get somebody to create it and update it for you it can be more expensive in the long run. Magazines use their websites to advertise their magazine. It is another way to sell the magazine as now people spend more time on the internet than reading print magazines or books etc. This is a way to reach out to a wider audience and expand the target audience. This may open up a regional magazine for example to a wider audience outside of the region that may be interested in the area and magazine about it. Magazines becoming available on the internet has had a large impact on print magazines. Because our generation are becoming more and more dependant on the internet, we use it for just about everything. It's easier to read a book on your phone or tablet than to go out and choose one and purchase it in a shop.If it's accessible on your phone, you don't have to store the magazine anywhere and you can access it whenever you want with internet connection which is available to almost everyone on their phones. This is why magazines are turning to online media, in order to reach out to this new, wider audience which could improve their audience numbers massively. I feel that magazine companies should, and are using the internet to their advantage to gain back that audience and not loose out on money that can be made from online advertisement and subscriptions.

Survey Monkey on what the target audience want: 

From this I can see that the majority of the people who took my survey are the correct age of my target audience.

This result shows that a website is wanted by my target audience and would be visited. This connotes that my website will be successful.

I will take the top 3 suggestions from this answer to include on my website. (New sports kit, running tips and personal stories). This is what my audience are interested in and I will include this on my website.

I will have some new articles and some matching the magazine. I think this will keep interest in the website as it will offer something different.

Online discount sounds like a perfect idea for my audience and also somewhere they can shop for the items they like. I will include additional articles also.

I will include the same colour scheme to ensure that my website is seen to be obviously related to my magazine. My audience will be able to see the link between the two.

Sections research:

Above is the 'header' so to speak of the website, this shows the company logo, top left, a search bar and short cuts to the different sections of the website. At the very top of the screenshot, you can see there are links to email, Facebook, twitter, YouTube and Instagram. This shows that they aren't just available on one website and magazine, they have many ways of you following them. I like the way the logo is in a bold, serif font. This is easily recognisable and very suited to it's female audience. It shows connotations of being a 'girly' font as it is a fancy and curly and would not appeal to men. The shortcuts below are in a more simple serif font which goes well with the logo at the top. Not much of a colour scheme can be seen here.

This is a slideshow that is shown on the website each image has a caption and is a link to an article, competition, review etc. I like this idea as it makes the page interesting and there is always something going on, meaning the page doesn't always look the same. This idea is very simple, yet effective. I think I will use something like this for my website.

Here another example from the slideshow is shown, '7 simple superfoods'. Below it as some of the articles that feature in the slideshow. Not only can you click on the slideshow images but you can click on these links and read a small caption on what it is about before you go on to read the section. I like this idea but I think it is in some way repetitive and I am not sure I would use it on my website.

'Racebook' a made up section of this website imitating the well known 'Facebook' the idea is to find races online, just like you cm find your friends on Facebook. I like this idea as it is unique and quirky, but I do not think I will us it for my website.

This is a section of the website where people can see the most popular things people have read online. As we can see this is a gender specific website as it talks about running and periods. This is something which I don't think men would be very interested in! However, I do think this 'popular' section is a good idea as people are able to see what fellow runners are interested in reading and the readers themselves might get a lot of these articles that they may not have known were there.

Masthead:

This is my final masthead design, after asking many people, I decided to go for a simple, yet bold design. I like this font because it grabs the reader's attention. For my magazine I think that I will keep the colour this way round, however, I do think it would look just as good with 'RUNNING' in black and 'KERNOW' in white. I have used black and white as it links to the colours of the Cornish flag which is a black and white cross. I think this minimalistic detail gives the magazine a hidden effect that you have to read in to, to understand. This fits with the regional aspect of the website because it links to the region of cornwall with it's colours and bold layout. This will be at the top of my web page and will make the website known to the reader as this is the same logo which is used on my magazine. My masthead fits with Corrigan's theory which says "Identity is fluid, it changes depending on the circumstance" The masthead fits this theory because it is black and white which links to the Cornish flag. The example of it changing is that it is not the shape of the cornish flag, yet it has changed to fit the circumstance of the magazine theme.

Flat Plans:

Here is the flat plan for the home page of my website. My two linked pages will be the 'health' and 'kit' sections below the 'search' bar. The box labeled 'slide show' will show a slideshow of images that are featured on the website on both the linked pages and other sections. The page will feature many images and information as stated in the boxes on the flat plan. This is my initial idea and I hope to elaborate on this when I create my website.

This is my first linked page on 'kit'. This page will feature an advert at the top of the page for example a running shoe advert to fit with the running theme. Below this there will be images of recommended kit and text about where to get it and descriptions of the products. There will be extra images and information along the side for people who would like to know more.

This is my second linked page on 'blogs' here will feature the athlete of the week and a section of their blog written by them. There will be an image of the athlete in the top corner of the writing.  At the top of the page there will be a panoramic style image of athletes running. On the right hand side there will be examples of previous athletes blog features on the website.

Multi media research:

There are five elements of multimedia, these are: Text, graphics, animation, audio and video. All of which can be included on my website. The text and font used on my website is what will draw the reader to the page. I think the only other element of multimedia I will use for my website will be possibly video. I will have a slideshow of images on the page, this may pass for video. I will also use graphics on my website to aid the design of my page and how it is displayed. The way the page is displayed plays a big part in how successful the web page is. If it is not represented in a way which draws people to the page, people will not want to visit it. This is why it is important to include the right multimedia on a page, otherwise you will not invite your target audience in and they will not be interested in what is there to be seen.

Equipment list:

For my images, I will use athletes from my athletics club as my models. All of the athletes are cornish or have been living in Cornwall for more than 3 years so this fits with the regional aspect of the project. I will ask everyone for their permission  to take their photograph before the competition begins. I will be taking all of the images and I will use the cannon 5D mark 3 to take my images on. I may also use a reflector and flash to aid the lighting of the images. I will use apple mac computers to do all of my work. I will use dreamweaver to create my website and photoshop to edit any image or work in which I put on my website. I will write all of my articles on word.

Original Images:

I used these images of kit for my 'Kit' page on my website. I had to crop them into diamond shapes and size them correctly so that the fit on my page

Here are my original images, I took hundreds of images but narrowed it down to just a short few to put onto my website it was important to take lots of images, just to get the correct ones. I had to edit all of my images in photoshop in order to make them the correct size and shape to fit onto my website. I had to resize all of them and then replace the files in my website folder in order to have them show up on dreamweaver.

Photoshoot Reflection:

Looking back on my photoshoot, I think if I had to take my images again, I would taker my 'Kit' images outside as I feel they would be better in natural lighting. However, I am very pleased with all of my other images as I didn't have to do much editing to them, other than the cropping and sizing for the website. All of the athletes I took images of are Cornish, fitting with my regional theme. All of my images fit with the stories they are going to be placed with on my website and I feel like the images will look good and improve the overall look of my website. This fits Corrigan's theory that "identity is like fluid, it changes depending on the circumstance" It fits with this theory because the athletes are showing off their identity by representing their county and showing their regional pride.

Editing Evidence:

Below is some evidence of my editing process, I have written next to each image what I was editing and why.

Here I had to replace the image that were already there with my own. In order to do this I had to resize and reshape my images so that they fit exactly as the previous images did. I had to change text and colour in order to make my website look like my own.

Here I had to highlight text and change it on the left hand side of the page so that I did not mess up the text font or size etc. I also added social media tabs at the bottom of the page. These are not linked but when you hover over them they change colour.

Here you can see that the image I inserted was the wrong size. This was a common problem that I found when creating my website. It was difficult to get the correct size and shape the first time. It often took me a few attempts to get it right.

Here I inserted an image of the location of my address. I liked this idea as it looked unique and different. I decided to keep it bigger than the text in order to draw the viewers attention.

Here I changed the colour of my text to fit with the colour palette of the website which was black, white and pink, along with some light green. 





Final Website:

Here are some screenshots of my final website, you cannot see the full page on some of the screenshots as you need to scroll down further.

Above is my website homepage. I have included images of local Cornish athletes in order to appeal to my target audience. This goes against Andy Medhursts' 1995 theory of youths being "Awful because they are not like us" this is because I am portraying youths in a positive light which they are not normally seen in in the media. 

 This is my second page on my website,(my first linked page) it is a blog page about a Cornish athlete who is achieving her dream of going to America for university. I have included three images of her in the same shape and style of the images on my home page. I have also written an article about her.

This is my second linked page on my website, it is about kit that you can easily find and use at home without having to go to the gym. I have included and image for all four pieces of equipment, again in the same style as the images on my other pages. I have kept the colour palette the same.

This is my third linked page of my website, it features a section for the viewers to complete and fill out if they wish to sign up and join Running Kernow. It also features contact details like numbers, address and email address for the viewers to contact the company.

Overall I am really happy with the look of my website and how it has turned out. I really enjoyed making it and look forward to making more web pages in the future. This applies to Gauntlett's theory that in order to focus on new media texts we have to throw away our old tools. My website applies to this theory because in order to advertise my magazine, I have to use news ways to do this. Making a website is a new way of advertisement, instead of an advert in a paper which is what people used to do.

Here is a link to my final website: http://bodminmedia.com/Lily/index.html