Wordpress was the platform I had chosen to create my Web Presence. This essay describes and discusses Web Communication 101 methodology, implementation, and outcomes of Web Presence development. Although other alternatives, such as advanced features, could have been used, Wordpress was chosen for its unique advantages. The service area chosen was pizza making and cooking, in particular the Pizza Hut activities. Specific Web 2.0 techniques have also been used to enhance blog content and online presence. These tools included Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, and this essay will explain why they were selected and how to use them.
Although Wordpress is primarily considered as an authoring platform (Shamah), it has effectively exceeded this reputation and has extended the locus of its influence beyond blogs. Since its inception, Wordpress has continuously added to its arsenal of handy tools and features. Wordpress allows integration of advanced features such as shopping carts, mailing lists, and combination with social networking websites, which helps generate and maintain traffic on a blog, which is essentially its lifeline. Another critical factor that tipped the decision scale in Wordpress’s favor was the availability of widgets and plugins. Wordpress allows users to upload information in a straightforward, simple, and elegant way (Shamah). In a nutshell, these capabilities have allowed Wordpress to become a content management system.
Another reason Wordpress was preferable to other platforms is its multilingual capability as it is available in all the major and minor world languages, including some of the old ones. The key aspect that helped finalize Wordpress as my Web Presence site, however, was the fact that Wordpress is free and easy to set up. Wordpress software is readily available online and can be downloaded for installation on a web host of our choice. This allowed me to finalize Wordpress as the platform of my choosing.
The process of creation began with signing up for Wordpress, and a URL https://yimingzeng.wordpress.com/ was selected. Blogs on Wordpress rely heavily on themes, and the pre-designed Hemingway theme was chosen. As required by assignment instructions, five pages were created: Home, About Me, Pizza hut, Making a Pizza, and Exegesis. The theme was customized slightly to include a picture of my choice and to give the blog a Title. The process culminated with the creation of nodes for integrating contributions for social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Having stayed abroad, I have learned the art of cooking and sharing, which initially inspired me to focus on food and cooking. The critical requirement of a blog is that content should be well written and being well informed and experienced in culinary matters about Pizza mainly due to my job at Pizza Hut, I was well suited to this. The About Me page included necessary information regarding me and my background. An email address was also posted for viewers to contact. The page regarding “Pizza Hut” included various types and methods of making Pizzas at my workplace. The “Make a Pizza” page was where I shared my personal experience of making Pizza; I included various YouTube videos to acquaint the blog visitors to the Pizza-making process. This is an overview of the content I put in the blog.
The next step was to use Web 2.0 tools, and three of those were selected for their specific benefits. These three were Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Henceforth, their specific strengths and reasons for their choosing shall be discussed.
Facebook has over 890 million daily users and 1.39 Billion monthly users (Alexa.com). It is the primary social networking tool in Australia and worldwide. It ranks as the second most visited website as per Alexa ranking (Alexa.com). With its video and photo sharing facilities, continuous connection with friends, families, customers, and subscribers, Facebook has become an indispensable social networking tool. It is self-evident that linking Facebook to my blog would help generate traffic. Moreover, using Facebook’s resources, my blog is capable of posting Cooking photos and videos as well. Since the demographics related to Facebook are abound, it can be a learning experience for me to be exposed to other countries’ cooking styles and members.
(Johnston)
Twitter is what defines Microblogging. It had a slow initial permeability in Australia, but it has grown beyond any forecasts, as is evident by the graphs attached. It has maintained a linear growth rate and is expected to reach a user base of 3.2 million in Australia by 2018.
Facebook is the most useful tool for targetting a younger audience, and Twitter is the key to getting in touch with people above 35 years of age since they comprise 60% of Twitter’s Australian users (Lewis). Twitter’s strength is in hashtags which, combined with search, helps reach like-minded people, and thus Twitter needed to be included in the Web 2.0 tools used for the task as I could use hashtags similar to cooking and crabs and help improve traffic statistics,
(Johnston)
Hefferman has described Instagram as one app to replace the camera, darkroom process, and publishers. The strength of Instagram is that person and subject matter index its content, and thus it eliminates any ranking algorithms that might have been used to judge the aesthetic appeal or quality or scales regarding beauty. Ever since its acquisition by Facebook, it has become more powerful and has a more extensive user base than before owing to the smartphone revolution. It is a well-known fact in the blogging world that pictures increase the traffic by magnitudes. Thus integration of Instagram provided tools to integrate all the usefulness and utility of this excellent website into my blog. This would allow people to look more photos of food through my blog and thus increase user hits.
Thus, it can be concluded that Wordpress is an excellent option for building Web Presence, because it is safe, simple to use and easy to set up and integrate of Web 2.0 tools, includes a variety of customizable widgets and themes and helps craft an outstanding blog. These strengths enabled me to have faith in it to post about food and cooking, coupled with my personal experience and interest, to put a useful and exciting blog online. The Web 2.0 tools selected for the purpose have a large user base, a plethora of facilities, and resources, including images, videos, and hashtags that identify and target a particular part of the broader public that can be used to improve network statistics and overall quality of the blog. It is expected that Wordpress will have increased popularity and utility in web-development and blogging, and its technological and user-friendly provisions would, even more, facilitate the author.
Works Cited
- Johnston, Eric. ‘Twitter Has Growth Plan For Australia.’ The Sydney Morning Herald. N.p., 2013. Web., Jun 6, 2015.
- Heffernan, V. (2013, 05). Instagram. Wired, 21, 94-n/a. Retrieved from https://search.proquest.com/docview/1411852801?accountid=10382
- Lewis, A. (2010). Facebook and Twitter: Socially network yourself to success. Training and Development in Australia, 37(1), 8-11. Retrieved from: https://search.proquest.com/docview/208559768?accountid=10382
- Shamah, D. (2009, Sep 2). Wordpress: Both free and priceless at the same time. Jerusalem Post. Retrieved from https://search.proquest.com/docview/319698897?accountid=10382
- Alexa.com. ‘Facebook.Com Site Overview.’ N.p., 2015. Web., Jun 6, 2015.