The student created two websites - one for their high school and one for mental health information. For the mental health site, they included information resources, links to other sites, and options to donate or get help. They used a blog to track progress on both sites for ease of electronic updates. Through research on style models, the student learned to design websites for specific audiences and purposes. Their mental health site targets teenagers and young adults, using an attractive female actress in the intro video. The student gained skills in website design and planning through these projects.

1. shammone

2. I created a website for both a homepage of a
school and for a mental health website after
being interested in learning about the processes
of creating a website. I created EHS – Eaton
High School as a fully functioning webpage with
links to other areas of the website including the
media department.

3. Mental health homepage:-

4. I created a whole school brand with bold colours
and a logo. For my main task website, I created a
website for a mental health site, where people
would come to gain information, donate money
and get help. There are working links to other
websites to better reader’s insight too. I created
a strong brand identity which runs throughout
the website.

5. I decided to use a blog to track the progress,
changes and developments within both of my
websites. I decided to use a blog because of its
simple ease to quickly and straightforwardly
update my blog electronically, something that is
essential to my tasks, since they are electronic; it
made the most sense for me to use a blog.

6. My media production is a fully functioning
website which runs the same layout, conventions
and purposes as many professionally made
website. From my research I found that different
website had different layouts depending on their
purposes, my style models that I research about
were all designed for their specific audiences and
purposes.

7. This is one of my style models:-

8. Therefore it showed me that I had to gear my
website towards a specific audience and create
it with a specific purpose rather than whatever I
wanted, since without these specific
conventions such as links, homepage, images
etc., my website would not be fully functioning.

9. I used my style model to base my website on but
with my own unique twist to make my website
individual to me.

10. My website challenges the normal conventions
of a website I have no gender specific features in
my website, such as colour or images. My video
uses a female actor, only due to restrictions in
my production.

11. Over 90% of all websites are run by companies
who either have created the websites
themselves or commissioned others to create
them. For this reason since my website is an
independently run and funded website, this
challenges the typical conventions of a website.
Funding would be gain through the charity
supporting my website.

12. I believe that my main website aims at are for
younger adults and teenagers. I tried to make
the website versatile for everyone within my
target audience, with an attractive and user
friendly interface, however I began to find
that what was attractive and appropriate for
one social group, was not for another.

13. This meant I had to choose my social groups to aim my
website at, rather than having just a broad range of
social groups. I used an attractive teenage female
actress in my welcome video, because I thought this
related to the social groups and age range I was trying to
aim my website at.

14. She was female, because I thought that after
looking at my style models and their videos,
which used predominantly female actresses, I
wanted to conform to this stereotype. An
attractive female, would attract a male audience
and give the female audience someone to
identify with.

15. The video its self gives the audience much more
understanding of the website and the aim of
Mental Health Online in a short comprehensive
clip that lasts about 1 minute, it helps
strengthen my website by making a quick place
for people to go when they first visit my website
to understand the purpose of the website.

16. The images that I decided to create, also
complimented the purpose and the theme of
the website, due to restraints though, I could
only use females for my images, and I would
have liked to use males as well, since I didn’t
want this website to be more female orientated,
but it still think it helped the general idea of
those I wanted to aim my website at, since they
of similar age to my actress in my film.

17. My website not only has a
primary audience, but also a
secondary audience in the form
of parents and carers of the
teenagers/young adult and
health care professionals, since
they may want to gain more
information on how to help their
son or daughter, and to help
others.

18. Furthermore there may be
another secondary
audience in the form of
those who want to help,
support and give money
to charities supporting
mental health, which can
be accessed through the
links of my main website.

19. For my preliminary task, the social groups my
website is aimed for, are of middle and working
class backgrounds, of a typical mixed British
background and of a mixed age. All social groups
are viewed in a positive light and no social group
is represented more than another. This is typical
of many websites that either have a welcoming
text and/or video, so the purpose of the website
is explained.

20. The social groups represented in my main
website are adults and teenagers with need for
information and help with regards to mental
health issues.

21. There is a universal feel to the website and has
links to website in the UK and worldwide and
have other links to wider branches into the
world that can help everyone. Ethnicity, gender,
age nor occupation etc. affects my website and
no matter whom the person is visiting the
website, the website should appeal to them.

22. Despite this however, because of different
values and morals, my website is aimed at
westerners, but who ever is looking at my
website as long as they had western views, my
website would be able to help them.

23. The media institutions that would distribute my
website would be completely different to that of
a film or text based media. Despite the fact I
don’t need distribution as such, advertising and
hosting from other website would mean I can
broadcast my content to a wider and larger
amount of people within my aimed social
groups.

24. I could use devices such as Google ads, which are
then added to other company’s website and create
more traffic to your website. Although I would own
the website, another more wealthy party may buy
my website such as those who run Mind.com and
who have experience in mental health issues.

25. There are no age restrictions, however content
is sensitive, so in the future as more topics are
added, the themes may need to be segregated
into age appropriate sections similar to
Mind.com, who has different sections
depending on age, and therefore can alter the
complexity of language used and depth into the
topic.

26. I attracted my audience in my preliminary
activity by using colours that were appropriate
to my intended social groups. I used an easy and
simple layout with attractive colours which had
connotations of grandeur and royalty to show
the outstanding academic achievements and
possibilities the school is and could achieve.

27. I addressed the audience by using welcoming
language on the homepage ad using direct
address. In my main task however, I used more
universal colours that would attract readers but
were still sensitive to the issues of mental health
but without being boring or unattractive. Once
more I used the direct address as I included in
my preliminary, showing the informal colloquial
style of the website in general.

28. In both my preliminary task and main task, I have
gained a massive new skill and understanding in
how to used Adobe Dreamweaver and Firefox. I
taught myself how to create a whole website from
scratch including how to create links, layouts and
embed and YouTube video into my main task
website. I now have a greater grasp of knowledge
into the creation of websites and can now go on the
create better more professional looking websites.

29. I now know what codes to use for specific
things such as changing the colour, size and font
of writing and how to create an engaging and
colourful website. Overall this means that I have
been able to create a main task that is neither as
wooden-looking nor unprofessional as my
preliminary task.

30. Adding my video to my website posed a massive
problem, but by using html that I have learnt I
was able to upload my video to YouTube and
then add it to my website where it is fully
functioning and anyone can watch it.

31. I made sure I had a script for my actress to read
off and specific camera angles that I wanted to
use within my video.

33. For example, this was a rough guide
the what angles I wanted to use:-
Mid
shot Close
up

35. Looking back over both my preliminary task and
main task, I believe I have learnt a lot about the
conventions of websites from planning the
layout, audience and colours to the actual
creation of the websites.

36. Not only have I learnt more about the
technologies that create the websites and
enable me to create a colourful dynamic page,
but also the planning that goes around the
websites that has to be in such depth in order
for the website to be executed perfectly.

37. My preliminary task was the
first ever website I have created,
so there are obvious huge
differences into my abilities of
making my preliminary and
main task. There are more
complex codes to write such as
how to embed images and
videos, something I tried on my
preliminary and then homed in
my skills to my main task.

38. My main learning achievement is to now
actually understand how in-depth planning has
to be before a website is crated, since in my
preliminary task I did not do as much research
or planning as I did with my main task.

39. Every tiny detail needs to be planned and
checked, even down to making sure that images
and music are copyright free and knowing what
font you’re going to use for a specific part of the
website. Without the planning a website would
collapse and not be up to standards.

40. Overall, I believe I have learnt so much from
creating a website media product; I got
incorporate the use of a dynamic website with
attractive images that relate to the website, and
a video that also strengthens the understanding
and uses of the website.