For this lesson, I got to play around with different ways to customize my website for San Miguel Pottery Land. I wanted to make it look more colorful and give it some personality because the pottery shop itself is pretty unique. I changed the background to a cream color, added a pottery picture to the header, and changed some of the other colors to match. I also worked on the menu and added widgets to make it easier for people to find things. Some parts were a little confusing at first, but once I figured out where everything was, it was actually pretty fun seeing my website come together.
While working on my website, I learned about different widgets that I could add to make things easier for visitors. The Search widget lets people look for something specific without having to go through every page. Recent Posts shows the newest things I’ve posted, and Categories helps organize everything so people can find what they’re interested in. There’s also a Calendar widget that shows when posts were published, and an Archives widget that lets visitors look through older posts by month. I like that WordPress gives you different options depending on what you want your website to do.
For my website, I decided to use Search, Recent Posts, and Categories. I chose Search because I don’t want people having to scroll through everything just to find something they’re looking for. Recent Posts is helpful because visitors can see what I’ve been posting lately, especially when I add more stories about the pottery shop. I also added Categories and named it “Explore Our Stories” because I thought that sounded a little more fun and fit the website better. I wanted everything to be easy to find without making the website look too crowded.
Besides adding widgets, I also made a few other changes to my website. I added a picture of colorful pottery to the header because I wanted people to get a little idea of what the shop is about as soon as they visit. I changed the background to a cream color and made the links a terracotta orange because I thought those colors looked really nice together. I also worked on my navigation menu and added dropdowns so visitors could find different stories about the shop. I even added a site icon, which I thought was a cute little detail. I’m slowly getting my website to look more like how I imagined it.
I think being able to schedule changes to a website is pretty helpful, especially when you have other things going on and can’t always be working on it. For me, having school and other responsibilities, it would be nice to get things ready ahead of time instead of having to remember to do everything at the last minute. It also helps keep the website updated even when I’m busy, and I could plan things around holidays or special events at the pottery shop. I like the idea of having everything organized and ready to go without having to worry about it later.