Getting to grips with the course!!!

In this past week I have successfully completed my first 16 hours of self study which made me feel quite triumphant and has put me in the position this week where I do not need to do quite as much. I feel that I have really got on top of everything and following my Feedback Group session with Steve I feel that I am fairly up-to date with where I should be. I think that with a few hours spent improving the work that I have done so far I will be ready to start with the more creative work next Wednesday.

This week I created the Delivery Requirements for this assignment. Even though this was quite a difficult task to do I did enjoy doing it as it involved me thinking into the future and specifying everything that I am going to use in the production of the site through to the maintenance of it. This was beneficial as I feel that it will help with the overall planning process. This was also quite complex at times as I needed to research things such as CGI (Common Gateway Interface) and FTP (File Transfer Protocol).

I also researched how much it costs to create a standard small website. This was interesting as it allowed me to see how much designers are charging currently for this service. I could have improved this by researching more companies and possibly contacting some designers directly for a clearer indication of the costs so I will consider this for next time.

I struggled to find relevant sources to research how much should be charged for the maintenance of a small website and this proved to be quite time consuming. This was mainly down to the fact that the criteria that I was entering into the search engine (Google) was not efficient enough to find the info that I was looking for. After trying several different combinations I eventually got a set of results that were representative of what I was seeking. To help with this I could have contacted a web design company to see how much they were charging but this may have taken quite some time. Next time I will try to refine my search so that it accurately represents what I am searching for and this will hopefully present me with more accurate findings earlier.