Going Live

We had planned today to go live with our site. We felt that we would be able to achieve this and felt that by this stage we would have enough content to go live with.

Whilst trying to go live however we encountered some problems. We were unable to view our site in different browsers and found that some of the panels on the home page did not line up, despite the fact that they did on the dreamweaver. We had to use different CSS styles and alot of trial and error in order to correct this. Although we were able to improve how the site looks we were not able to fix it entirely. However, we still decided to go love and focus on our content, and go back to fixing the design at a later stage.

We were able to go live and our website address is www.yourftown.co.uk

News Stories

As a group we decided that we would all have a large part in the content of the website.  As we all have a feature to write it was decided we would also write some news stories and reviews.

As we intended to go live in todays lesson I decided a few weeks ago that I would write a couple of news stories which would be ready for when we went live.

As we already had our site template it was mainly just a case of putting the news stories on the dreamweaver template and making them aesthetically pleasing, then linking them back to our Index page.

My first news story was about Weydon School; I found this story when reading The Farnham Herald and got my quotes from the councillor's blog. I was able to import my text and the picture of Weydon School easily and then linked it to our Index page.

My next news story was about the East Street development.  I wanted the design of this page to look slightly different from the other news story.  Although we wanted the news pages to be quite simple I also did not want them to look identical to each other.  I decided a good way around this was to wrap the text around the picture.

This was more difficult than I had anticipated.  There was not a tool which I was able to use in order to wrap the text and was unlike using Fireworks or Indesign.  After a lot of experimenting with Dreamweaver we were able to find an align tool and we found that when we highlighted the text and the picture and pressed align left we were able to get the text next to the picture.

My next problem was that I was unable to indent the text, therefore there was no margin between the text and the picture and it did not look very good.  Although we could not find a way around this problem on Dreamweaver we were able to make an image on fireworks and then import it into Dreamweaver to give the impression of an indent.

Access to Farnham Filming

For one of our features we have decided to write on how accessible Farnham is. We decided to do this by using three different forms of transport and conducting a race from somewhere back to Farnham.

We all agreed that the place we should be trying to access Farnham from was Guildford. We thought this would be good as it is the nearest city to Farnham and young people may want to go there to experience the nightlife or the shopping. Guildford also has direct routes to London, and many other places, from the train station.

The three methods of transport that we decided to use were car, train and bus.

We hoped that our website would not only be informative but also fun for someone to look at, so we decided that a good way to do this feature would be to film our separate journeys that made up our race.

Sophie and Adam decided that they would go on the train; Liz took the bus whilst Sam and I used the car. We all met at the University, rented some video equipment, and made our way to Guildford train station. Once at Guildford train station we decided to meet back at Farnham train station and then went our separate ways, to film our journeys.

Once the race was complete we then had to edit our videos as we did not want them to be too long, or an audience may get bored. I found the editing a little challenging at first as I do not study TV and therefore I had little knowledge of Adobe Premier Pro, the editing programme. However the editing we needed to do was quite simple and I was happy with our finished videos.

The videos will be incorporated in the written feature on the website.

Page Template

The idea of our website is to change people's thoughts on Farnham and make it seem more interesting for younger people. In order to achieve this, not only do we need interesting content, but we also need the design of out website to say this aesthetically. We want the design to look quite edgy and the exact opposite from what people would normally associate with Farnham.

To achieve this we looked for templates on the internet and found one that we thought would work well with our website idea. We liked this template because it would fit in with how we wanted to lay out our pages but also would appeal to a younger audience.

We also decided that Adam would design the website banner for us. We decided on a graffiti style of writing and we were all very pleased with what Adam designed. You can see the banner below.

Navugation Map

Content 2

We have decided that within our website we will have five main features that each of us will produce individually, although we have agreed that all of us will take part in the research for every feature. Our feature ideas are:

§ Access to Farnham

We decided to do a race using three different forms of transport; car, bus and train. We would film ourselves making the journey from one place out of Farnham and we would then all meet up on the University campus and see which method of transport takes the longest. For this feature we are going to use a lot of video images.

§ Farnham Heritage Trail

Theirs is already a heritage trail that takes place in Farnham but our group plans to make a new trail incorporating places that will be interesting to a younger audience, and to show them the way around Farnham.

§ UCA

A lot of young people in Farnham attend UCA and therefore we wanted to incorporate it into our site. We are also targeting young people who may want to come to UCA but are not sure what to expect from Farnham and the University itself. Therefore a section all about the University is very important.

§ East Street

The developments on East Street has been big news in Farnham and will continue to be, what is planned to be developed and what has been ruled out may effect some peoples decision if they were thinking of moving to Farnham. We wanted to include a piece about East Street for all these reasons.

§ Budget Living

Lastly we wanted to include a piece on budget living because it has always been such a huge part of life for students and young people in general, particularly these days when you take into the account the recession. This feature will include information about how to live on a budget and where to shop to get the most for your money.

Website Design

We have decided to use the Dreamweaver programme for the design of our website. Our whole group is familiar with the way it works and therefore we felt that this would allow us to distribute the design work evenly.

We have also decided to use Fast Hosts as our domain.

Content Ideas

Whilst brain storming we had some ideas on what we would like to include in our content: Pub/ Restaurant ReviewsThis would be updated and could also be added to be the users of the website. They would be able to rate the places that we put on the site.

Events

Anything new that is happening in and around Farnham, including music gigs or special nights in any pubs

Shops

Which shops were best for young people and students. This could include a piece about the recession.

Maltings

Anything that may interest a young person that was coming to the Maltings, this could also be updated.

Tour of Farnham

Using video could do an up to date tour of Farnham including areas where young people might like to go to.

Accessibility

How accessible Farnham is via public transport. Perhaps a race getting from one place to another using different forms of transport.

Archived Pages

General useful information such as contact us and where Farnham is in UK.

Your F Town

The name of our website is going to be 'Your F Town'.

We decided on this name because the slang 'F Town' means a town where there is nothing to do. This is a common perception of Farnham and something that we hope to change with our site.

'F Town' ca also be associated with Farnham for the obvious reason that it begins with an F and young people sometimes nickname the towns which they live in and this could be one for Farnham.

The Group Website

Decision 1: Something different

For our assessment we are required to create a group news site, which mixes some archived information, with news stories as well as having some user input. Sam, Sophie, Adam, Liz and I make up our group and our first decision was to do something that none of us have done before.

Everyone has their specialities but we all agreed that this time we wanted to move away from dealing with what we are comfortable with and try and make something new. As we all know, it's not possible to always do what your good at, and the mix of people in our group would make for an interesting site.

Decision 2: Farnham

The one thing our entire group had in common was the fact that we all go to UCA and therefore have spent some time in Farnham. Therefore we thought it would be a good idea to make our site Farnham based. We liked the idea that we could try to entice people to Farnham with our website and show them that there is more to the small down than old people and dingy pubs. Our idea to sell Farnham to young adults and students was formed and we just had to decide how we would go about selling Farnham.

Decision 3: Our Take

We decided to make our website fairly light hearted and fun, we wanted people to see Farnham that way and therefore it had to come through in the site. We decided to concentrate on areas that would be interesting to young people, such as pubs, restaurants, shops and events around Farnham. We also decided that the East Street development would make an interesting news article and we could incorporate video images with a tour of Farnham.

So I hope you enjoy reading how we came to our decisions on our website and everything Farnham, and the work we put in to achieve what we hoped to.