This blog post is an evaluation and reflection of the web publishing assignment. I will discuss how I found the work personally but also look at the advantages and limitations of using Webnode to complete this part of the assignment.

By using the initial ideas and designs drawn up the first assignment, the transition from turning an idea into a physical site wasn't as problematic as I had first anticipated. As a keen HTML programmer I was naturally sceptical of Webnode and how flexible it would be in making it do exactly what I wanted it to.

I managed to find a template not too dissimilar to my original plans and as a bonus the colour scheme suited the topic very well. I began by constructing the skeleton of the site; build each page without any content and ensure links to each page worked, then working from the top level down, I began to fill out each page with content. To my surprise the process of adding new pages and linking them together was very simple as Webnode would automatically take care of constructing the header links and breadcrumbs itself. The most difficult part was actually writing the page's contents. The text editor in Webnode is very buggy, for example, on numerous occasions I would write the content of a page with what I thought was the right layout, but upon hitting save Webnode would disregard my layout and assign it a new one to match the template. This included it centring text and changing the colour from black to grey. It was easily resolved by going back into the text editor and editing it again however it's a problem that shouldn't be there. I did my best to pay attention to accessibility criteria by using consistent fonts and colours throughout the site. I would have used alternative text for all the images on the site if I could've, however for images used in a list you there is no option to set an alternative text. Because of this I tried to name the images as descriptive as I could to compensate for the inability to add alt tags.

As mentioned I was wary of Webnode and its capabilities, but for a small website similar to this project I think it's great, especially for beginners. It has good documentation and a useful FAQ type area that enable you to quickly learn your way around the software and build something professional very quickly. Despite this, because I am so used to developing websites by coding rather than using a GUI I'd personally say that Webnode or any other software like it isn't powerful enough to compete with what can be achieved by coding.

I believe the final result is a strong and professional website that would be at home if applied to a real similar business. When compared to other small bike shop's websites it is often much better looking and has a more logical layout. Because of the size of the project there are very few weaknesses, however if I were to be picky I can't help but feel the site would benefit hugely from a database. Product and service information could be stored in the database and then rendered by the web pages by using a server side scripting language. This means the product pages could essentially build themselves from what is input into the database. However I am aware this is beyond the requirements of this project so my conclusion remains, I am very pleased with the website and believe it could be easily implemented and work for a real business.

On this site there are features such Google Maps, RSS feeds, Facebok and Twitter links and links to other socal networking sites. Product information and images came from https://www.chainreactioncycles.com/

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