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Dear Monet. Readers,
This is it. This is the last reflection for my first course of my NMIX journey. To say how quickly this came to an end is an understatement. However, I am extremely proud of myself for my determination. Being a graduate student and working a full-time job where there are hours when I’m not even able to check my phone until I get a break, I am so proud for making the time to grow, learn, and complete my assignments.
The WordPress unit for this course was by far, my absolute favorite. I enjoyed designing my own website, picking the content, and sprinkling in my personality. It partially made the task fun and less like an actual assignment. I patted myself on the back and panicked through the frustration, but I figured everything out.
For my final project, I wanted to experience that feeling again: creating. No matter what I’ve done in my life, I have always loved learning new things and creating those things myself.
One of my dreams in life is to start my own magazine publication. I was an editor and contributing writer during my senior year for my campus women’s magazine, Alice, at The University of Alabama. It was a great opportunity to see how one story can go from a draft to the front cover of an issue, and I was so honored when that opportunity happened for me.
With this project, I thought it would be a good idea to combine my experience with WordPress and my dream. I wanted to make something that younger Alexis would have never stopped talking about. Thus, Monet. was born.
While the idea sounded great in my head, what I didn’t know was that I would face so many challenges. My first unfortunate event began when I was trying to choose a theme for my website. There were so many options to choose from, and when I did choose one, it wouldn’t allow me to customize what I needed. I kept getting frustrated and turned to Google for advice.
I eventually found the theme that would work for me, Sento Magazine. Great. I was changing and adding content. I added the plugins, Simple Custom CSS and JS, Quiz Maker, and Contact Form 7. When I tried to edit more, I received a message saying that I could only make a certain number of edits, and the only way I could make more is if I paid for the Pro version. I’m aware that paying for the Pro version was not needed, but I did it. I loved how my website was looking, and the customization tools were endless.
After uploading my theme, everything started coming together. My ideas were flowing faster than I could type. I had already studied popular magazine websites, like Essence, Cosmopolitan, and Seventeen, before incorporating my own ideas. I started with my pages, coming up with different topics and posting ideas for those topics. I then thoroughly searched for corresponding photos on Unsplash. Once those were established, I designed the header, navigation bar and footer. I lastly just had to link everything together, so the website would make sense. I constantly had to switch from viewing this website from a web development persepctive to a journalism perspective.
Overall, I’m impressed with how my project turned out, and my favorite pages would be the home page and the Monet. Media Kit post. I’m so grateful for this opportunity to expand my creativity and my mind.
