Final Project

Strategy & Testing:
My main strategy for promoting my site was to use google keywords to help me find the most common search terms for Tegan and Sara. It was really helpful because it gave me ideas, such as spelling sara with an "h", that I wouldn't have thought of normally. I was able to take those ideas and create better metatags for my site so that hopefully it would show up in a broader range of search results.

My browser lab experience actually went pretty well. I played around with viewing my site in a lot of different browsers in the 2-up view, and didn't really notice a whole lot of changes. The main thing I noticed was that some browsers didn't support my font and defaulted to Times New Roman, which was fine with me. One thing I thought was funny was that my buttons didn't have top or bottom borders in IE 7.0 Windows. I will definitely continue using browser labs as long as it is free. I would probably even pay for it if it becomes necessary to in the future because it is so helpful.

The accessibility testing went ok for me. I tried cynthiasays first, but it was a bit too overwhelming and confusing to read everything, so I used achecker after that. It seemed to be much easier and direct. The only thing it told me to change was my link color because there was not enough contrast between that and my background color. I really liked my link color, so I decided to keep it even though it was not in best practice for accessibility.


MAIN BLOG POSTING QUESTIONS:

Who is your target audience?
My target audience was fans of Tegan and Sara music. They have a pretty broad following, but majority of their listeners are young and trendy.
What design choices did choose to attract your audience to your site?
I decided to use clean colors, mainly black, white and grey with my links and a couple of my h tags as a pop of color. I got my colors directly from an image of Tegan and Sara so that my color scheme would be more cohesive with my main image of them.
What troubleshooting did you experience?
It's always so hard for me to recall troubleshooting when it comes time to do the blog post because it's something I just constantly do as I go along without really thinking about it. Nothing really stands out, sorry.
How did the images you use contribute to your website’s purpose?
I used on image on my home page so that visitors could know immediately by the name and image who the site was dedicated to. I also had a photo gallery that had a bunch of images that I photoshop'd all down to the same size for a clean layout.
Did your CSS style add to the “siteness” of your website?
Absolutely. Without css, my page would have looked like crap. I think the wrapper and borders are really what help me the most because they give the site a controlled feeling, as if everything is in it's place.
What style choices did you make to improve the readability of your table?
My table was for the discography of T&S, so I chose to center the album titles above the track listings, but to keep the track listings aligned left so that they were easier to read. I also chose to separate the album titles from the track listings by using red.
How did the media you created contribute to the purpose of your website?
The media I used was a the video for their song, "The Con". I had created a page titled "Song of the Week", so this was where I included my chosen video.
What plug-ins does the end user need to display-play?
I think just flash since it's just a youtube video.
Describe your validating experience.
I was validating my pages as I went along, which made validating at the end a lot easier. I was surprised that I didn't really encounter many errors except for on my site map because I had made a mistake on my ul, but it was easy to correct.
How did integrating SEO best practice change or improve your website?
The main thing that I learned was not to link to unpopular sites because even bad links can lower your search rankings. I think knowing this will help my sites in the future a lot. I wasn't really sure how to use link popularity, so I just used only the official websites of Tegan and Sara that I imagine to be the most popular, such as teganand sara.com,twitter, youtube and facebook. It also was really helpful to have google ad words as a tool and I will 100% be using that in the future to ensure SEO.

Lauren Pogue - T&S Fan Site