It’s almost midnight and I wanted to share something with you that I have discovered over the years (relating to web pages and music) that really bugs me.
It’s pretty simple really. I never seem to finish the things! There always seems to be something more that can be done. Something can be made prettier, or something can be expanded upon to better get the message across.
Something that I teach in Year 12 is called a Software Requirements Specification. In this students plan out the software that they are going to make for a very major assignment. It’s quite a big deal! As the students progress in their work they always find ways to make their project better. Sometimes this diverts them from the core elements of the project that were agreed upon at the start, and they do not finish a functional program. (It has to function and contain all of the assessment elements.)
Anyway, where this is going is that it is quite important to determine the scope of the project fairly early on in the piece. Anything that is not in the initial plan needs to be left alone until the initial plan has been completed. If you don’t do this you often find that the work is incomplete or very much skewed in one particular area while others do not get the attention they deserve. Sometimes the job never gets completed due to the sidetracking.
Psychologically I find it very difficult when working on websites, or composing music, to keep on track. I always seem to want to go off on tangents and do what feels good at the time. Invariably I end up with an incomplete product that doesn’t get across the message that I want to get across.
This is something that has bugged me for most of my life. Making sure that I have a good overview at the outset and make sure that that overview is completed before exploring the other avenues is the only way I have found to actually get a job finished. Sometimes I lose the inspiration that I felt when the diversion initially presented itself but I have to accept that that’s just the way life is. After finishing the basic job, hopefully, I can get onto the expansions then.
I never feel that the website or piece of music I’m writing is fully complete. There is always something more that can be done to make it better. I sometimes wonder if some of my students feel that way about work they do for school. I don’t think that’s likely but I’m sure most people feel it in some area of their lives at some point.
Anyway, the reason I write this is that I really hope I can get this new course design properly presented in a website form with WordPress. I’ve never presented it as a website before and the more I do the more I find that there is to do. It’s frustrating and exciting and challenging all at the same time. It’s Iike an endless rabbit hole. I also hope that my students manage to stay on track and not be distracted by too many of the bells and whistles that WordPress plug-ins have to offer. I want them to be aware of the pitfalls of going outside the original scope of the project and the importance of setting an original scope that is achievable and complete. That’s why the planning is so important. For all of us.
Equally important is the ability to say “it’s done”. There is always something that can be done to improve a product so just being able to sit back and say “this does the job very well just as it is” is not always easy to do, but is a necessary skill to develop.
Please make sure that your planning document takes into account all of the content and ideas and goals and visions that you have your website. Refer to it constantly. By all means, expand on it but keep looking at it so that you know what the core purpose of your site is. This way you will achieve the best possible outcome for your audience and let’s face it – that is why you create a site in the first place.
Wishing you all the best with your WordPress site.