Webtext Design Guide

Web­text Design Guidelines

» Apply dig­i­tal rhetoric under­stand­ing and skills, com­pos­ing for online audi­ence:
web­text arrange­ment, with orga­ni­za­tion, links, mul­ti­ple media

» Eas­i­est to use your Word­Press site; how­ever, feel free to use any other plat­form for webtext.

Gen­eral design guide — use

• Pages  (sub-pages under Project 1 “par­ent”)
   
  • Dis­trib­ute con­tent across mul­ti­ple pages —
    with purposeful/thoughtful lay­out (con­sid­er­ing audience/readers and platform)

   

  • Arrange into sec­tions (label, title pages) — plan/outline prior
    e.g. the gen­eral top­ics: art­form, medium, tech­nol­ogy, his­tor­i­cal con­text, aes­thetic movement/trends
    — But likely best to label in your terms (specific)

• Hyper­links
  — for nav­i­ga­tion between over­all pages/sections and from within text (hyper­linked words?)
   
  *Chang­ing top Nav­i­ga­tion Bar (adding/hiding pages): Cus­tom Menu
   
  » reminder from class: link­ing pur­pose­fully (delib­er­ate sequence?); offer­ing mul­ti­ple types of nav­i­ga­tion; link­ing for read­ing “back and forth” (rec­i­p­ro­cally on pages)
   

  → Pro­tip Use Images as Links (WP.com tuto­r­ial)

 

• Mul­ti­ple media
  » WordPress.com Sup­port Sec­tion
  • Embed pur­pose­fully / thoughtfully

   

  • Use images (pic­tures, graph­ics, GIFs, screen-capture); videos; stream­ing audio
    — per­haps upload your own, into Media Library (strongly recommended)
    *Note, sug­gested strat­egy for images: save from Web, edit, then upload to Media Library.

   

  • Employ media in mul­ti­ple ways: sup­ple­ment dis­cus­sion; use for var­i­ous purposes/effects, such as to illus­trate, doc­u­ment, demon­strate, express, con­vey, sim­u­late, etc.
    (in other words, not only show­ing what is dis­cussed in text/content; think sup­ple­men­tary relationship).

• Effec­tive dig­i­tal rhetoric: design for online readers
  — revise and edit/proofread care­fully, “pol­ish­ing” for “publication“
  — mod­ify main con­tent (essay draft) as needed, imag­in­ing audience
  (for exam­ple, creating/arranging sec­tions regard­ing lay­out and media)

  * Pub­lish only revised, final project

  • in other words, ensure all pages, links, and media ele­ments appear & func­tion;
    revise text (not first draft!) before post­ing, reflect­ing for­mal aca­d­e­mic style.

» Cheryl E. Ball further notes that webtexts take advantage of the affordances of their medium: "Webtexts are not linear articles with a few multimedia elements, such as video trailers, TED-like presentations or video supplements; they are a specific (and ever-changing) genre of peer-reviewed scholarship that uses the affordances of the Web (browser-based presentation, multimedia, hyperlinks, etc.)" and "Webtexts often need to be experimentally multimodal, merging modes and genres together in ways that are often new to readers." — Dig­i­tal Rhetoric Col­lab­o­ra­tive Wiki

» Resource: exten­sive Word­Press Sup­port pages

» For more advanced design (using HTML), switch from Visual Edi­tor to “Text“

→ for exam­ple, link­ing to sec­tions of a page.

Instruc­tions here.

Note: I often use a blank <a id="section"></a> sec­tion label/ID.

But you can make the sec­tion head­ing / label the “anchor” for the link by typing:

<a id="section">Section Heading></a>

— which will make Sec­tion Head­ing appear as the anchor.