Interface Drawing Exercise

The interface of a blog refers to its theme and the elements that help differentiate a blog from any other website. Firstly blogs have a header. This is displayed at the top of the blog and remains the same on every page. It is usually customised to state the title of the blog and has menu options to navigate around it. These are likely to have been created to give context to the blog, allowing visitors to easily identify what blog they’re on and what it will be about. They are able to easily move throughout the blog in a simple manner using the menu that generally accompanies the header.

The footer is similar to the header in that it remains the same on every page of the blog however it is instead displayed at the end of each post or page. It includes links to other posts, categories and can also include external links, such as those linking to the blogger’s social media sites. This too was likely created to help visitors navigate their way around the blog, whilst also allowing them to go further into the blog and read more posts by easily and visibly linking alternative posts or pages that they can visit.

The post section is generally displayed beneath the header and this is where everything posted by the blogger goes. This is the most basic element of the interface and must be displayed on all blogs otherwise there would be nothing to read.

Finally, the sidebar is, as you would imagine, located on the side of the interface, generally next to the top of the first post. The sidebar again helps readers to navigate the blog and includes things like archives, recent posts, a search bar and in the case of my blog a ‘follow me’ button. The sidebar was likely to have been created to make it easier for readers to find posts from a particular time or on a particular topic. They would have otherwise had to scroll through the entire blog to find the post they want to read but this process is much simpler due to the sidebar.

Here is a rough sketch of the interface of my blog, showing the placement of all the elements discussed in this post.

Ethics and Online Media

Ethics in online media and blogging is so important. We must consider that we are working in a public, online space where everyone is able to view our work. This not only means that we have to consider what we say about people, topics or companies but we must also protect ourselves from things such as hate comments and trolls.

Managing spam is very important and through the use of a plugin, such as Akismet, we are able to ensure that visitors to our blog are not distracted or influenced by negative or unnecessary comments. There is also the possibility that people may not agree with our opinions or may simply leave hate comments in an attempt to gain a reaction from us. Therefore it is important to monitor our comments and ensure that nothing left on our page is negative or offensive towards both us and anyone else. Racist, Homophobic and sexist content should not be present on the blog as it can work to ruin our reputation as we enter the professional world.

More info on ethics 

 

 

Copyright and Creative Commons Licensing

Copyright is a form of property that claims the creator of a piece of work. It is immediate and lasts for the creator’s life plus 70 years. You can be copyrighted for Literary, dramatic, musical and artistic works as well as sound recordings, cinematic films, broadcasts and published editions of works. Copyrighted images can be used by anyone as long as the requirements from the creators are met. If you don’t know the requirements set by the original creator then you should not use the work. Alternatively you could instead link the image rather than embedding it.

One way to use a copyrighted piece of work is through Creative Commons licensing. This is used when someone creates a piece of work that they are happy for people to use but don’t want to have to grant individual permission to everyone who wants to use it. Through meeting the requirements of the original creator of the work, such as attribution, non-commercial, no derivatives and share alike people are then able to use this work in the same way as I have done below…

Photo by Herry Lawford

Creative Commons License:

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

 

About Page

Here is a link to my About me Page!

Meet Me

Akismet Active

Akismet is an example of a Plug-in being used on my blog. A plugin is an add on to the wordpress blog which helps to take care of spam.

Blogs as Online Diaries (What is a Blog and where did they come from?)

I have always thought of blogs as a form of online journaling where people share their experiences, opinions and wisdom with a group of followers. This audience interacts with the blogger’s posts allowing them to start or even continue a conversation between this small community. This observation fits well with the format of early blogs which were typically used as online journals where people would share aspects of their life with their following.

Blogs were first used following the introduction of the World Wide Web, invented by Tim Berners-Lee, in 1990. Back then they were called ‘weblogs’. This term derived from the word ‘log’, formerly referring to ship logs and the word ‘web’, referring to their place in the online world. This phrase was then further shortened to ‘blog’ in 1997 by Peter Merholz whose blog, PeterMe, featured very essayistic posts, similar to those in which we would see today.

Adventuring into the World of Blogging

I am not an avid blog reader. The only time I ever read blog posts is when I stumble upon one whilst googling for information on certain products or ways to do something. I do however appreciate the practice of blogging and have always admired how people are able to tell their stories, whilst not only entertaining their audience but also being able to help them.

A blog that I discovered trecently that I have been utterly captivated by over the past few days is YoungAdventuress. This blog is a travel blog and is run by a young American girl, Liz,  who is currently living in New Zealand. She has spent the past seven years living in and travelling to many destinations all across the world and has documented these experiences through this blog. She has accumulated over 500,000 social media followers and receives around 1 million views to her blog annually.