Updating My Professional Website

I have made some significant changes in my website during the last few weeks. I didn't think that I would be one of those HTML people, but now I can't seem to get enough of it. I'm even working on making a website for my 121 students, and attempting to use blogs to aid them in their research process. Maybe I'm biting off more than I can chew, but I'm excited about it nonetheless.

As far as style changes go, I feel that my site is based more on user-friendly aspects rather than glittering graphic design. I think I am still working on the basics, which is why I don't expect my sites to look attractive. When I first decided to make updates on my webpage, I went to the Spider Guide to 100 Do's and Don'ts of Design. I have to admit that I was overwhelmed by all the links and options for the design on the site. When I looked it over, I browsed more than read every detail. After a while I got a good feel of what a website should look like. I also checked out some faculty websites to see how they organized things. I think that my website is a combination of what I find useful in a website, and what I see that others have done.

On my homepage I played with tables a little to manage layout. I'm thinking about putting a short bio on the page, but I'm stuck on what I should write. The site is professional, so I want to sound appropriate, but I want it to still sound personable. I guess this is something I will have to work out in the future.

My interests/hobbies page was a fun experiement with scanning pictures of cakes that I have recently decorated. Since cake-decorating and making webpages are two new interests for me, I thought I would combine the two. I used more color and type styles on this site because I wanted it to seem more personal than my other pages.

My resume, book review, and research project all represent the academic and professional sides of my life. I wanted to find a balance between both sides, which is why I included them on my site. My resume is in a web format, but I think I would rather make it a pdf. file the next time I revise it. If a user minimizes the window, the format of my resume looks jumbled and not as polished. On the other hand, not everyone has Adobe Acrobat Reader (even though they should). It's something that I will have to work on a bit more, as well as other aspects of my page.

I plan to continue to learn more about webpages and web design, because I think it does make teaching easier--though I may not know this for sure until next semester.