Bell 1,3-4 and Drupal site genre update

The first few chapters of Mark Bell’s Build a Website for Free skim over the basic concepts of web design. He discusses font and color choices. He also really stresses the importance of planning out exactly what your website should look like, what its function is going to be, and who your audience is. While Bell doesn’t go into as much detail as Redish does in LGOTW, the basic concepts are the same.

 

 

As one of the major projects for my independent study, I chose to create a website using Drupal. Originally, I had planned on creating a crafty-type site for selling quilt patterns. My mom had been nagging me about doing something like that for a while, so I figured it would be a way to do two things at once. Well, since then, my parents have decided to move. My mom has been insanely busy, and has had no time to design quilt patterns. Hmm. What to do? Eventually I decided to create a site for the homeschool group that I belonged to for a number of years. The group has really grown lately, and while they do now have an email list, most of the information is communicated through the mailed-out newsletter.

 

Since there are about 50 families involved, it has gotten quite expensive to mail out a newsletter. Problems have come up in the past when something on the calendar has changed but not all of the families were notified. There is also a teen-run magazine/newsletter that goes out. People interested in homeschooling (or homeschoolers that have recently moved to the area) would also benefit from an easier way to contact the group coordinator, rather than relying on word of mouth.

 

Other homeschool groups in the area already have websites. Most of them are very poorly designed, and aren’t very helpful to potential members.

 

I am going to create a site that fits the needs of my former homeschool group. Once the site is done, I plan on approaching the group coordinator to see if they would be interested in using it.