During my time in my Intro to Digital Humanities class, I learned how to make a website using two different programs, Github Pages and Wordpress. I will be comparing these programs and the experiences I've had using them.
What made using Github Pages particularly difficult was the fact that it was completely new to me, and I had to learn all of the commands from scratch. There was definitely a steep learning curve when I was working with this software. Wordpress was easier in this sense because there was a Graphic User Interface that allowed me to do whatever I wanted with the website without any previous coding knowledge. There was some difficulty with changing the website from a blog site to a regular website. When you create a website with Wordpress, it automatically makes it into a blog site, and you have to manually go in and make changes to the website to remove the blog portion.
The main advantage Wordpress has is its accessibility. It is is better for a beginner learning how to make their own website because of its simple layout. Personalization is an advantage HTML has over Wordpress. You can be a lot more thorough with HTML pages in terms of customization, especially with css styling. With Wordpress, you had to pick a pre-made theme for your website when with HTML you can customize the look of your site in extreme detail.
One of the challenges I had with HTML was learning the commands. For example, in order to caption a photo, you need to wrap the entire element a figure
container. As a beginner, some of these things were very hard to understand. Another challenge was when the website wouldn't work because of one small mistake in the code, and having to search to see what you did wrong. I definitely did not have nearly as much trouble with Wordpress.
HTML requires users to learn commands for website creation. These commands affect how the words on the page are displayed, navigate to other pages on the site or completely different websites, display images, and so on. You don't have to learn these commands for Wordpress. You have to learn the layout of the program, but with the GUI it is much more self-explanatory than HTML.
As I keep practicing with HTML, I want to get better at css styling. I have already learned it, but I would like a more in-depth understanding of it. I also want to memorize more of the commands so I can customize my pages more easily. During this course, I frequently had to visit during office hours because I was having trouble with HTML. My goal is to get better so that I will not need as much assistance in the future.
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