Before this module started the only online portfolio website that i had was blogger which comes free with every google account. Blogger has quite a lot of customizable options, you can change things such as the layout of the page, size of the header and you can even have a custom background. At first it took me a while to get to grips with Blogger's engine but after a couple of hours of tweaking around i was able to make a pretty successful blog. Blogger comes with a tagging feature which allows me to tag every post with an appropriate name, this helps to organize my work and it also makes it easier for people viewing my work to find the post they want to see. Whilst customizing my blog i figured out how to add a sidebar which shows all of my tags, at first i did not use that feature as it confused me but now i see how useful it is to see all of the tags on the main page.
I am pretty happy with my blog although there are some things that i need to be careful with. I always upload my images with their actual size meaning that they are massive and fairly easy for people to steal. Our lecturer taught us how to save our images for the web using a setting in photoshop, when i have time i may have to re upload all of the images that are currently on the blog so that i can protect them.
I also extended the page width so that my images are nice and large when you open up the page, as you can see in the image above roughly 70% of the page consists of content whilst the tags and archive side bars only take up a small section to the right. It was a stylistic choice of mine to make the links purple, looking at how my work has changed throughout the second year i can see that i actually use a lot of green colours, maybe it would be good to change my text colour to match the content.
Once logged into Blogger there are a load of customization options that are available, a lot of them are pretty self explanatory. The drop down bar on the left allows you to change the template of the blog as well as the webpage settings. You get an option between simple and dynamic layouts.
The simple ones feature a static background and the information will usually get centered to the page where as the dynamic pages allow for animated sequences and transitions upon opening the page and clicking chosen images.
This is one of the dynamic layouts that you can select, this window allows to to preview how the blog will look before anything is made permanent. This 'Mosaic' layout looks a little like an online newspaper, this test window also allows me to preview the animations of the page and i can also see how the images work and tile together. This layout is pretty cool as it comes with an icon magnifier which enhances the size of the box that your mouse is currently hovering over. This window allows you to instantly apply the template to the blog, or you can choose the customization option which will allow you to tweak the template to get the exact look.
Above i have opened up the customize screen and it then opens up a new set of menu options, i can change the width of the entire blog or just the right hand sidebar. I can also add in backgrounds which will then look and act different depending on which layout i have chosen for my blog.
Within that drop down menu there was also a 'layout' option which essentially strips down the site to its bare basics from there i can then move things around, edit headers, content and even order the sections on my side bar. Above is an example of my current layout and all of its elements, each white dialog box contains separate parts of my blog, clicking on each one allows me to edit what will be shown in that are of the web page.
I personally have the simple layout as it works well enough for me, a while ago i used the 'mosaic' template, it worked well as a portfolio site because of the large image sizing but as a blog it was not very productive and it became harder to navigate once i started to build up the posts.
Blogger also works as a mobile app which is a great feature as i can keep updated on the move, upon logging into the Blogger i am able to select an options menu for the mobile apps settings. I can choose to view the page as if it were within a browser or i can use a custom blogger app view which changes the view the match the phone screen size. I do not really keep myself updated on the go but it is nice to have this option her .
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