TO: Traci Gardner
FROM: Lindsay de Gastyne
SUBJECT: Reflection Memo for Project 2 (Web Portal)
DATE: February 23, 2015

My blog, or Web Portal, for this class is called “lindsay with an a.” I chose this title because the a in my name has become more important to me recently as more people have been spelling it with an e. For me it has come to symbolize the unique parts of me that I’m so proud of. The link to my site is https://lindsaydegastyne.wordpress.com.

My overall goals for this blog were accessibility and then attractiveness. I wanted it to be very easy to read, but also pleasing to the eye. I aimed for an A with this project. I used a couple different modes of communication. The linguistic mode is displayed in my title, tag line, blog posts, about me page, site info page, and widgets because words are everywhere. The visual mode is also dominant because of the layout I chose for the blog and the background color. The header picture I chose and the gravatar profile picture of myself contribute to the site by breaking up the words with some artistic images. The aural and gestural modes were not included in my site but spatial comes into play with how I organized my blog pages and placeholders for projects in the menu, and in the order I displayed my widgets in the sidebar.

My site is pretty simple but I hinted at it in my About Me and I hope to use this one or use the skills I’ve learned in WordPress to make another blog of my own after this class to showcase some of my writing samples or spout off my opinions online. I really wish I could have done more customization to the layout because I would have changed around some of the fonts and text sizes and color schemes. I also would have put in more pictures if I could have more control over where they go and what they look like, but WordPress has only some settings available to the users who create blogs for free. Overall I am really satisfied with this site and I think it will be extremely functional for the remainder of this semester’s class.