Getting this site set up with pages and categories has been a good opportunity to dig into the functionality of WordPress in a more strategic way than I normally would. Having used WordPress for over a decade on my personal site and many other projects, the basic structure and features of the platform are very familiar to me.
Taking structure, features and functionality into account while designing the form of the site from a user standpoint before developing content is a new experience for me. I appreciated the opportunity to make decisions around using primarily categories or tags and how those would be sorted together in the way which makes the most sense.
Having done my learning plan with Dr. Atha for all of the courses required for this degree, I’ve included categories for each course. In doing this I’m assuming I (and others) would like to be able to quickly find and identify content written for a specific course. Of course, with the flexibility of WordPress I would be able to make changes quickly to the courses listed in categories should my learning plan change.
One unexpected benefit of laying out each course as a category is again seeing how a large task (finishing this degree) can be broken down into smaller accomplishments (finishing each course) as a way to stay motivated and encouraged.
I’ve also created categories relating to TWU’s leadership competency model. I appreciate so much the clarity in this model and have identified my own personal strengths and weaknesses in each of these areas.
There are certain areas in this model where I would expect and appreciate to see significant growth in my time as a student in this degree program. To be able to categorize content as it’s being finalized related to each area of this competency model is something I’m looking forward to.
Rather than leaving each category as a listing in a sidebar widget or simply linked from related posts, I created a menu which gathers like categories together under nested headers. A menu containing About, Competency Model and Courses headings with relevant categories as dropdowns from each is at the top of the site.
A reader who is looking for content related to a specific course or an attribute of the competency model will find all posts from those categories by clicking on the entry in that menu.
Through all of the categorizing and menu building I’m also very aware that this will become a personal archive for my work in this program. The ability to keep digital records of my work in each course which can be found with one click will be helpful and convenient.
Over time I’m anticipating to use tags as I begin to discover patterns and trends within different areas of study and my own work. I’ve been encouraged to be tracking research and references as a way to start quickly when it comes to the Leadership Integration Projects later in the degree.