Welcome

Hello!

My name is Danielle and I have decided to create an online blog, which documents the progress I make throughout my third year of my degree. I am using the blog in relation to my dissertation. I am creating a website for a group called Dawnswyr Bro Cefni and they are a Welsh folk dance group that perform Welsh folk dances, folk songs, singing and instrumentals.

Back in the summer my supervisor for my dissertation advised me to keep a diary of my research and processes leading up to the creation of my website. However, this was in July. It is now November and after learning how to create a blog, ironically I'm not all that up to date with the 'online world' but here I am :-)

So, I have kept a full diary of events by hand up to this point as up to now I have been very old school, but I am sticking by my guns and will be keeping my written diary along side my blog to back up my dissertation when I submit it in 2010.

So, enough for now I'm blabbering. Here is some information to get you all up to date;
It was in February of this year I met and became apart of the dance group, Dawnswyr Bro Cefni. I met them through my boyfriend whom has been friends with the leaders since a young boy. I advised them that I was thinking about what to do for my dissertation as I have been watching my boyfriend create his for several months, he is a year ahead of me just so you all know, and I mentioned that I was currently creating a website for a Welsh Traditional Music Group, which the group leader of the dance group is also in, called Rhes Ganol. The leader then advised me that he needed a website for the dance group to which I jumped a the opportunity and wrote down an overview there and then of what, as a client, he would like the website to consist.
It was in the March that I had my idea signed off by the department enabling me to go full steam ahead with my research. I have looked into the following;
Research into creating websites (hypertext, the Internet, HTML (hypertext mark up langague) and XML, Algorithm, Browsers, RSS feeds, adding comments and instant messaging etc…
Research of traditional welsh dancing and music – what is its meaning? Why is it so important? (Brief history of Welsh culture)
• Interface design/Page Design
• Information architecture
• Navigation (How will I build the site? Layers, child and adult pages, links, RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds from other sites, I.M, blogs, interaction etc… Site and Page structure)
• Universal Usability
• CSS (Cascading Style Sheets)
• CGI (Common Gateway interface)
• Typography
• HTML/XML Format
• Programming (Dreamweaver)
• Interaction: Forms and applications
• Graphics and multimedia

Most of this research I have to admit lies in a book which has become my bible, Web Style Guide 3 and also the online research tool W3Schools, http://www.w3schools.com/html/default.asp .

Over the Summer of 2009 I travelled with the group to Germany to a prestigious festival called the Vinzenzifest where I filmed all of the dances that they performed out there so that I could post the dances online and create small taster video’s to go on the website. I also took hundreds of photographs so that I had a variety of images to chose from to use on the website.

I am now at the stage where I have produced all of my social networking sites for the group which will be linked directly to and from the main website and I have created a presentation of my idea's for the layout and design of the website.

Sorry this blog is so long, this will be the only occasion as it is my own fault for not taking action earlier.

Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoyed it.

I will blog next when I have made some progress.

Take care and speak soon!

Danielle
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