Last week we discussed how it is important to have a structure to a blog. It makes reading the blog easier and the overall design look nicer.
We have been tasked to create our own blog structure and this is mine:
For the last couple of week in the workshops we have been covering how to connect to our own database running on myphpadmin. I have decided to look more into this in my own time: the code I have created is this and I will run through what it all means:
<?php — Opening PHP file
if(isset($_POST[“post”])) { this is saying if a submit button with the name post run the following code.
$name = ($_POST[“name”]); This is saying what ever is in the input part of the form with the name “name” then put that information into the database table with the name “name”
$post = ($_POST[“post”]); This is saying what ever is in the input part of the form with the name “post” then put that information into the database table with the name “post”
if(empty($name)) { This is just if submit is hit out there is no data inside the form if that is true then it will display the following message on the site
$message = “Invalid Name”;
} else if(empty($post)) {
$message = “Invalid Post”;
} else { This is else statement for the above code so if the form was filled out it will run the below code
$query = “INSERT INTO post (name, post) VALUES (‘{$name}’, ‘{$post}’)”; This is the code that puts the data into the database table “post”
$result = mysqli_query($connection, $query);
if($result) {
$message = “Success, your post was added”;
} else {
$message = “Sorry, something went wrong”;
}
echo $message;
}
}
?>
The first thing we were ask to do as a team was create a about us page. I manage to find one of my team members Letitia Mills via Facebook and talked about who had more experience with HTML and CSS, it turned out I did, so I offered to create a mock up of the about page. I said I could easily create it using bootstrap and it was agreed that we would use it. Letitia is going to create the content for the page.
We are going to try and meet our third member this week in the workshop/seminars to see what they think and could add to the project.
For our web project we will need to use some sort of database to hold data. We had a lecture on how this works and using Richard Barker’s model on how to hand create them first, lets us see what they may look like as an end product.
I was set the task to create a ERD for a recipe book site. Here is the data base I created:
I then went on to check it in Microsoft Access to check if I was to use this I would run into any problems, thankfully I did not.
Today we had three lessons on database design.
In the first which was a workshop we were set a task to, set up a table within our database to allow users of the site to upload their information (username and password) Below are some images of me doing that:
I then had to find a way for people who cant access the database manually to input data, this is most commonly done on a website below is a screenshot of the code i created myself:
WikiCommons is a place for people to share images and video to be used by others without the worry of copyright. Under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 4.0 license which WikiCommons uses, any file uploaded by any user can be used by anyone. This is all explained in a graphic provided by WikiCommons which I will upload at the end of this post.
Using WikiCommons was very easy and took less then 20 minutes from creating an account to uploading my first image. I have also looked through some of the files uploaded by other users and have found lots of images that I may use in my project, if my group goes with my idea. This would be a huge help as we wouldn’t have to worry about copyright unlike when you take images off Google.
I’ve started looking into GitHub, as my lecture told us it was a good way for a group to work together on the same files.
Everytime a file is updated on GitHub, it doesn’t override the whole file just the part that has been changed allowing two people to work on the same project without causing the other on to lose their work. It also allows us to look back on past files within the project just in case something goes wrong without loosing other work that went correctly.
I’ve only just started looking into GitHub and made my first repository. Its all very new to me and I will need to look at Lynda.com for their video tutorials on how it all works.
Today I had my first lecture of my new unit Design for Digital Media Environments. We discussed such things as Web 2.0, open source software such as JavaScript, Ubuntu and Open Street View, which for one of our tasks where asked to contribute to.
I had a look on the map at Bournemouth University and noticed the bank Santander which is in Poole House was not listed. So I created a account and decided to add it myself, the process was simple and I feel I gained a sence of community as I was adding to something that 100s of other people around the world have also added to. I believe that if everyone started to contribute to such applications as Open Street View and others then the web would become a much richer and full of lots of great usable by all content.
I have finished my poster and thinking back on the question I picked which was “What is your social network?” I am wondering if I answered the question. Which I believe I have to a degree. The brief for the question stated: “Visualise your Facebook social network using Facebook’s classification of close friends, family and acquaintances.”
To answer the question, I went to my most used social media which is Facebook and I was just casually scroll through the news feed trying to think of a way to categorize everyone. Who would I put as close friends and acquaintances. So i decided to do some research on how to collect my profiles data, such as who I communicate with the most, through messgaes, comments and likes. I come across http://www.wolframalpha.com/ which on the site has a page that does all that for you and more. It help to categorize ever single on of my friends quick and easily.
Though the results didnt shock me they did me an idea. My network as made up of mostly acquaintances, a few friends and little family. Because Facebook logo was just a single F I decided I was going to create that F and fill it with different colour circles. Literally having one circle represent one Facebook friend, which later in the process of creating the poster, I found hard and had play around to get them to fix perfectly which in my eyes it still doesn’t.
The colours of the circles were hard to decide on, for the most part I had just random colours for the circles which I didnt think made much sense and thought back my data and my idea and how I could could portray the message in two ways, one way with the F and the other with the colours, having the circles fade into Facebooks famous blue colour from families being the farthest away from it to acquaintances being the blue. This shows acquaintances make up my Facebook.
This is the final result:
Though it did full my idea, I still think with more time I could do better.
After discussing my current poster with my tutor, we have decided that the colours are not good and look a bit like traffic lights. So I have come up with a different idea, through my research I have found at most of my Facebook friends are acquaintances, which has given me the idea to use the Facebook blue fading into the F. For example, the Family category is the smallest group of friends on my Facebook, which on the poster will be represented by the light shade of the facebook blue, then close friends will be half way between the lightest shade and the full shade of blue and acquaintances the full shade of blue making up most of the F.
I think this will help show that Facebook is a place for everyone in your life not just “friends” how they market it.
