NMIX 4110 Critical Reflection
This year must be the first year that I’ve gotten to watch summer slips in the most intensive way! The New Media Production course – NMIX 4110 – has made it the best summer in my life by providing a quick tour around the computing world, along with many hands-on web development projects.
In front of the finish line, my final mission is to build a website that could reflect my academic level while striving beyond the course minimum standards. Notice the enormous power of WordPress from the previous experience, I know this is a fantastic system to develop my last project – a charity auction shop!
Have you ever heard of the Second Life Toys campaign where people donate their unwanted toys to revive the old broken plushies to raise awareness about child organ transplants? It is exactly what my site is about, but with one important feature: allowing buyers (mostly parents) to auction that new, cute, unique plushie, for which the bid-winning money will be sent towards charity organizations.
Speaking of theme and software support, WordPress’s Lalita is definitely a solid assistant to help me fulfill the topic idea. In addition, I trust Gutenberg Blocks and Template Library by Otter for its dynamic blocks and use WooCommerce to set up products and contents, Woo Auction Software to host live auctions, and WPForms Lite to insert contact and feedback forms. Some of these plugins are utterly new to me, and thanks to this project, I have the chance to play around and modify its function to fit with the site’s purpose.
Compared to the last encounter with WordPress, I believe my experience with the largest open-source CMS has gotten better this time. If Project 3 was filled with confusion and the overwhelmed of having to work with many features, then for this assignment, I can say that I have total control over blocks and more comfortable with extensive plugins (actually, start loving it now!). One of the highlights, and the big difference between the two encounters with WordPress, is the presence of blog posts. Visitors to my site can find articles about transplant facts, nutrition tips, and the primary purpose of our Second Life Toys website. The appearance of the sidebar and side widget is also something I am proud of from this project. Users can easily find social links and follow up with new articles/comments from two sides of the web. One sweet thing that I love about this project is the background music from the right sidebar – something I have never accomplished and was scared to try in the past.
Speaking of the challenge while building the web, of course, every assignment carries its own struggle. At first, I could not install the WordPress application due to some PHP errors, which was luckily solved, thanks to Reclaim Hosting’s quick response. Second, the confusion between the blog page, which contains all the posts, and the post section itself took me a while to figure out the proper connection. Through this experience, I learn that it is crucial to understand how everything works before starting to work on them. It only makes the situation worse off without not knowing which direction to drive to.
Overall, that is just one of many valuable lessons this class has taught me during a short summer month. Though its challenges might be a little overwhelmed due to the lack of time, I believe NMIX 4110 is a wise investment for those interested in learning about the new era of “media.” This playground definitely helps me to define my dream path and be more confident with my decision. That is all I need!