Reflection and Defense

As I sit here and reflect on the website that my team and I have prepared, I cannot help but think that it was far more simple than I had originally expected it to be. Perhaps I owe it to the fact that we used WordPress, rather than another website creation tool. As I understand it, WordPress takes a great deal of the effort away from the creator, as they rarely are made to write code. Another aspect that made this website easier to build than I originally expected, is without a doubt my teammates, who worked hard upon their pages and helped me when I had difficulty with WordPress. Finally I would be remiss if I did not give proper thanks to Amanda of the Ramsey Library, who helped myself and Haylee learn code.

While the site was easier to build than expected, it was not all simplicity and ease. There a few problems with the process that made us deviate from the original contract. One such problem that I can clearly remember was with the sources. Originally, I had planned on writing, not only the Ministers of the church, but also of the SAC leaders, and the man that helped bring the church into being, that being Lon Ray Call. While there were many documents that referred to the SAC, Social Action Committee, of the church, few spoke of its members. This would be expected for older documents, as many may have not wanted to be implicated in social activism in the 60s, 70s, or even 80s, but it was somewhat surprising for more recent documents. I was also surprised that Lon Ray Call had fewer documents than I originally expected, primarily because he is mentioned on the Special Collection’s page for the Unitarian Universalist manuscript collection, and he has a page on the Dictionary on Unitarian & Universalist Bibliography website. Another change from the contract that I made was the Thinglink image I had originally planned to have. This was not so much a problem as it was simply a change in decision. Originally it was going to be the front page and have links to the church’s main page, an explanation of the significance of the Lantern symbol, and other links that offered general information. The only problem was that I could not think of any other websites that offered the kind of information that would fit the page, so we decided that we did not need the Thinglink on the front page, and that the interactives would fit there better.

Overall I am pleased with our final product of a site, even if there are a few changes that must still be made, and I believe that my team members are pleased with it as well. We had difficulties that we resolved and learned from, and we also learned how building a website can be far simpler than we have originally be led to believe.