Thursday, December 13, 2012

Dreamweaver Nightmare

Using Dreamweaver wasn't really a nightmare, I only used it as the title of the blog because at first it seemed like it was going to be, and also because DREAMweaver and NIGHTMARE- get it?....

Creating a website tailored to myself was kind of hard, but kind of cool. Kind of hard because I’ve never used Dreamweaver before, or anything like it, also kind of hard because I wanted it to have a very positive and accurate reflection on myself. It was kind of cool though because I was able to choose what was used and how it was used. 


How my website will be used to promote myself:
This website is a great self-promotional tool to get an internship or a job. It includes:
  • All of my best writing work that shows my abilities as a public relations writer. I’ve come to realize that writing is one of my strongest talents in school, so I thought it was important to implement my most important and best pieces of writing I created in college.
  • A self-portrait video I created on iMovie. Not only does this video reflect on my personality, it also shows my abilities to use the iMovie software.
  • My resume. The resume is what employers most commonly see, so even though I included a portfolio on my website, I wanted to include my resume to show my past work experience.
  • Contact information. I don’t feel comfortable giving this information out online usually, but it’s definitely important to include if I want to promote myself with this website.
  • Links to social media- A person who is looking at my website can click these to see how I project myself on these social media websites. In today’s society, employers are starting to look at their employees or applicants social media profiles, to see what kind of person they are. It’s important to have a positive yet accurate portrayal of yourself on these websites.
This kind of website is also great to have to post on to your social media profiles. People are more apt to find you through these social media websites than a personal website, so having this link attached to your biography section of a social media site allows people to get to know you and your abilities better. A website is more personal than your Twitter or Facebook because you have the chance to design everything yourself, and control what you post.

Overall experience with Dreamweaver
Using Dreamweaver was kind of confusing. I’ve never used it before and I’m not familiar with all of the coding. I have used In-Design before, so it was easy for me to design a header, but not easy for me to think of what I wanted the header to be. I wanted the header to reflect my personality and be creative. For my header, I used a picture of myself from a trip to San Diego and wrote my name in the background of the picture. I picked that picture because San Diego is one of my favorite places, and it includes a picture of myself. Adding the picture into Dreamweaver was easy, but getting it the right size was not. Eventually I figured it out.
Adding my writing pieces into my portfolio was the most annoying process, but I got the hang of it after a while. Usually I am pretty fast to pick up different software and technology, and looking back, Dreamweaver doesn’t seem that complicated if I had the time to use it more.
The real hardest part of creating the website, was deciding what I wanted to put in it to promote myself. I think I did the best I could do, since most of my classes require writing and research.
If I had more time to create this website, I would have probably designed it a little bit cooler (design-wise), and more intricate. One thing that would have been cool on the website, is to include a live feed of my tweets. Maybe next semester I'll go back and edit, and add more things on the site, and maybe actually use the website, or have it go "live" as 'they' say.

I recently got hired as an intern, working in the website/social media department of the company. When I told the supervisor I was working with Dreamweaver for my final project, she told me that I will probably never use Dreamweaver ever again; this is a relief, however I am glad I have gotten the chance to experiment in it. It really got me thinking, about myself, and I think it's important for anyone to have experience with all different types of programs. 

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