One of my major projects this semester as a CUPID Associate was updating the Student Projects page on the CUPID website. I know that I have been apart of interesting projects and my fellow classmates have completed impressive projects, and I think that its important to showcase this work on the website. I started by emailing the PWR professors, asking what the major projects they have recently worked on. When I got a list of seven new projects, I began to reach out to the students involved in each project in order to get an understanding of what they did. I emailed these students, requesting a brief description of the audience, purpose, and outcome of the projects, but like most PWR students, they went above and beyond. I received lengthy explanations of the projects and the rhetorical strategies used throughout these projects, and this helped me effectively convey the purpose of the projects to the viewers of the CUPID website. They also sent the final deliverables, too so that I could add these to the website.
I went over a few drafts of the content, making sure it was clear and concise. For this part of the website, I didn’t want to include an excessive amount of text. I just wanted to make the key points and move on so that the reader would be more likely to browse all the projects, not just the first few. However, the content was just the beginning steps, and I still had to conquer WordPress. In three of my classes this semester, we have been using WordPress, so my skills have greatly improved. I was confident in my ability to upload the text and basic images, but I ran into trouble trying to figure out how to get the documents on the website. Was I supposed to include them directly in the page? Could I add a link that would bring you to a PDF form of each document?
I am still working on answering these questions, but this project of mine has taught me several things. First of all, PWR students accomplish impressive projects from marketing for the Association for Business Communication to writing about Highway 64 to working on publishing articles in well-known journals. Second of all, sometimes being concise and brief is okay. I had to understand my audience and realize that they probably didn’t want an in-depth analysis for each project. Instead, the page is meant to act as a broad showcase of everything PWR students are involved in. Lastly, revisions and proofreading (on paper and on the website) are very important, and sometimes, you struggle with uploading content onto the internet. However, that’s what helps you learn.
What is something you struggle with when uploading content to WordPress?
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