As I wrap up my first complete version of this website and finish my undergraduate course on writing for the web (which also happens to mark the end of my time as an undergraduate student), I lot of thoughts are crossing my mind. Here’s a reoccurring one: I would’ve never anticipated how fun it was to build this website. Seriously, if you told me six months ago that designing this website would be THIS tedious, there’s no way I’d believe that I’d enjoy doing it. Yet, every plugin installation, CSS modification, and blog post is just SO satisfying. Even now, I’m clicking through my website way too frequently (even though I literally know everything that’s on here).
Another thought: I’m graduating. It may not have ended how I wanted it to, but here I am. My graduation is important to mention because, admittedly, it’s one of the reasons why I wanted to make a website in the first place. I wanted a place where I could compile the work I’m proud of, post content for my friends to read (I’m terrified of falling out of touch with people), and simply showcase who I am. I’m happy to say that I think I’ve accomplished my goal! Along the way, I certainly learned a few things that have influenced the way I’m going to write for the web (and use the internet in general) going forward.
There are two things that I want to focus on (and in my mind, they’re intertwined): credibility and design. As an English major, the importance of giving credit where it’s due is pretty much engraved into my brain. However, after spending years using MLA like my life depended on it, I never really thought about the ways in which we establish credibility online. Of course, there are more obvious ways such as hyperlinking and providing image sources, but there also other important components — providing alt-text, making sure my website maintains accessibility, having strong website design, and putting out strong writing. A few readings really stood out to me in this area: “A Link is a Promise,” “Copyright Basics,” and “Accessibility Basics.” For me, it’s incredibly important that my website reflects professionalism, and these readings really gave me an idea of the best practices I need to accomplish that.
Continuing off of the idea of professionalism, I focused heavily on my website design. I realized early on in our class discussions that in order to have credibility, a website needs to look credible (basically it needs to look good). So, I really poured a lot of time into giving my website a minimalistic clean design that was reflective of me. I modified font and text size using CSS, added a logo, and installed plugins that allowed for drop-down menus, special characters, footnotes, etc. I even got my sister to help me take the picture for my homepage. I think a lot of my obsession with design stems from my interest in media studies — I really wanted the focus to be on my content. Here were the readings I found especially helpful for this: “The Medium is the Message,” “HTML Basics,” “CSS Introductions,” Dr. Davis’s website!, alexlaughs.com, and juliaccarpenter.com.
So, with credibility being a large part of my focus (like I said, it’s even part of why I think good design is important), I want to talk about our current global situation. First of all, it’s horrible and I can’t wait for it to be over. Now with that out of the way, I’d like to say that it’s made me realize a lot about internet credibility. Before this whole quarantine, I really valued credibility (it was always a focus of my website), but now… I absolutely think establishing credibility is of the utmost importance. There’s just so much misinformation around right now… and now more than ever you can see how misinformation shouldn’t just be dismissed as harmless. It’s leading to bigotry against the Asian community, people drinking cleaning products, conspiracy theories, etc. I think this is one of the biggest problems facing the web right now.
We can scale this problem down to something a bit less serious that interests me: video games. On online communities such as Reddit, people regularly post about alleged video game leaks. Do you know what happens most of the time? The leaks end up being exposed as fake, but not before the game developers receive a bunch of weird tweets. Less serious, but still toxic.
In Tim Berners-Lee’s op-ed, he highlights a reason for needing a contract for the web: “to eradicate incentives that reward clickbait or the spread of disinformation.” I hope that one day we reach an internet where that kind of activity is much less prevalent. Until then, however, I’m going to at least play my part and make sure my website and writing are credible. It’s the least we can do to give back to this platform as writers for the web.
