The final post - METAPOST!
The end of semester! It has actually arrived, time to reflect on this blog.
Little Behaviours was mainly about explaining human behaviour. I chose this as a topic because I find it fascinating and I thought that others might want to casually learn about these things as well. I tried to make the reading as light as possible (I hope it worked) because when someone is reading about applying theory it can become very bland quite quickly. I hope my picture aids assisted in the entertainment factor as well.
I worked out pretty quickly that I had possibly bitten off more than I could chew when I started this blog. Writing the posts presented a problem with the length they took to create. This was because my posts were so long at 600-1000 words sometimes. They sometimes took more than five days to write when I was struggling to find sources, the result was I ended up only being able to write about 1-2 posts per week. However, I wouldn’t say that I have less content on my blog because, again, they are quite long. Meaning they probably hold more content than a standard blog post.
I ended up with 18 posts: 15 text posts and 3 video posts.
Overview of tweaks made to blog
Changed background of page
Changed background of content box
Added "back-to-top" button
Added "infinite scrolling"
Added clock widget in description
Added "hit counter" widget (accuracy is questionable, added late in the process)
Added social media share options
Use of Google Analytics
Technical issues that I couldn’t fix
The thing I had the most trouble with was CSS. While I managed to change the backgrounds fine, I simply couldn't make the content window wider (I felt the content would have been easier to read if it was bigger). I would continually adjust the pixels and it would be displayed in the preview. But, alas, when I saved the changes the window remained the same size.
I think this is something to do with my theme. Perhaps the author has applied something that is beyond my knowledge preventing users from changing certain aspects.
I will also say that my theme ignored "<h1>", "<h2>", "<h3>" etc descriptors and did not change the size of the text at all.
Technical issues that I fixed
I initially had trouble adding the "back-to-top" button in one tutorial. However I tried a few different codes when I got home and it finally worked! This time was also a "two-in-one" experience because I found the code for infinite scrolling on the same website.
While I wasn't able to change a lot of my theme I did manage to change my backgrounds. Surprisingly, this was quite a challenge. It was being as stubborn as the rest of the theme. But for some reason I was able to convince the background to change. Unexplainably it just saved properly the sixth time I "saved" the background changes.
Self directed learning
I tried my best to add some useful features to Little Behaviours: the "back-to-top" button, infinite scrolling and my clock and hit counting widgets. (you should be able to see them all around the page right now)
After having help with adding the social media sharing capabilities, I managed to work out how to add the "back-to-top" button, infinite scrolling and both widgets on my own! I used some online tutorials and found it much simpler than I thought it would be.
Integration with social media
I did as much as I could as far as social media integration goes. I posted links of my new posts on twitter, my youtube channel and my youtube channel facebook page!
Typical twitter share
One of my many youtube feed shares
Youtube channel Facebook page link share
While I shared the posts outside of Tumblr, I also brought social media into my blog! Viewers of Little Behaviours had the option of sharing any of my posts to social media sites without even leaving the page. This was a matter of adding three different sets of code to the HTML.
The sharing options viewers had
Analytics data
Interestingly, the majority of my audience was from America!
I put these numbers mainly down to my youtube audience as I shared links to them and most of them are from that country.
World map of Analytics data
I had views right from when I started posting on March 4th. What I found most surprising was my biggest spike in views on March 12th, where I had 38 views the whole day. This was when I released my third post How to tell if someone is not listening to you".
I think this is due to to it being a common topic and it got a bit more notice from other people in networked media production because that was also the day I received eight new Tumblr followers all at once (all networked media people).
I think that 30.31% is a fairly strong returning audience considering the internet is full of things that people just look at once and forget about. The average visit duration of 1 minute and 44 seconds does worry me though, as this would not be long enough to read one of the articles. I can only hope the returning audience are not part of this percentage. The 541 total visits discredits the hit counter widget as I thought.
I ended this semester with 22 Tumblr followers.
Lecture Content
I didn't know what to expect from the lectures in the beginning, as I didn't know a great deal about "Networked Media". But it certainly turned out to be a very interesting semester. It was very eye-opening to realise how many different things and people contributed to the creation of the internet. I would now say it is a rarely explored part of history.
In terms of application to our blogs, I would say one of the early lectures (WEEK 3) about HTML was the most useful. I say this because it was presented in an easy to understand way and I could almost write HTML competently when it came to the tutorial just from that lecture. CSS on the other hand was more of a self-taught thing. It was much easier to learn CSS in tutorials and with instructions.
Another notable Lecture was in Week 11, thinking about networked media for our own career. This was not only useful for our current blogs but a good perspective on how we can use these learnt skills in the future in ways of promoting ourselves in networks.
Some posts
I released three video posts to add some variety to this blog. Here are the links to the videos (I cannot post links to the posts themself for some reason, you can find them if you scroll down).
Social influence: its powerful!
Why old couples look alike
How to Bro Hug
You can find any of the text posts on this blog easily, but here are some notable ones:
Why is being in an elevator uncomfortable?
Why do people get embarrassed?
What is forgiveness?
All in all, considering the theme was difficult to adjust, I think I did a good job at making the blog's features and apearance fit in with what the blog is about. I certainly put in a lot of hard work in writing the detailed posts.
Well, thats about it. I thank you if you have been following the posts over the semester and I might just try to keep this blog going in the future. I have certainly learnt a lot myself just from reading the sources needed to create the posts. Maybe now you will be able to act normal in an elavator, or not show someone that you are embarrassed, or maybe even forgive someone much faster than normal because you know its good for your health!
Until next time,
Farewell.
