Overall, I had a good experience setting up my WordPress site and my about me page! I enjoyed getting to design the pages and beginning to create my own space on the web. I also was able to use css to set the home page font styles and sizing as I liked. I believe there are a number of different things that I can do with this site. As a senior who will be graduating soon, this site could be a great place to host a portfolio of my work. Throughout my time at Carleton I’ve created a number of digital projects, both in classes and throughout my time working in the GIS lab. This body of work displays the various skills that I have built in GIS, deep mapping, and archival research, but until now, I have not had a dedicated location to display these projects. I particularly like the idea of hosting my GIS projects on a WordPress site as opposed to storing them within StoryMaps/ArcGIS online. While those ESRI applications are helpful and work well to easily display maps in an interactive format, I have no control if certain applications are discontinued.
Using a WordPress site comes with a variety of advantages and disadvantages compared with pre-made services or social media platforms. As I touched on briefly, WordPress sites give you much more control over the material you make. You can really get into the weeds to design and set up the page as you like. Moreover, this control lasts over time, providing users with the ability to continually manage their web presence while not being at the whim of larger service providers who can alter their products/user capabilities as they see fit. While these are all great aspects, using a WordPress requires much more intentional work to keep the site organized and running well. Additionally, if you are hoping to get lots of exposure, you are not folded into algorithms in the same way a post might be on a social media platform.