genr.7100 27004497 brad boyce findings report

GENR.7100 FINDINGS REPORT GENR.7100 Findings Report 2015

Brad Boyce SID: 27004497

Waiariki Institute of Technology

GENR.7100 FINDINGS REPORT 27004497

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Contents

I. Abstract .................................................................................................... 3

II. Web design methods ................................................................................ 3

Hypertext Mark‐up Language (HTML) ................................................................................ 3

Content Management Systems .......................................................................................... 4

III. CMS options ............................................................................................. 4

WordPress ........................................................................................................................... 5

Tumblr ................................................................................................................................. 6

Microsoft Office Sway ......................................................................................................... 7

IV. Comment Platforms and Moderation ........................................................ 8

V. Hosting ................................................................................................... 10

VI. Marketing ............................................................................................... 10

VII. Conclusion and Recommendation ........................................................... 10

VIII. Significant Issues ..................................................................................... 12

IX. References .............................................................................................. 14

X. Screenshots ............................................................................................ 15


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Abstract

This is an academic report based on an empirical study into the creation and development of a website.

Participants included the Project Manager and client, as well as the Project supervisor and sponsor. The

client was seeking a website that could be used for the delivery of a personal blog. Two major

requirements for this website were established – primarily, that it would be created using a platform

that makes adding new posts to the website relatively simple for a novice user and secondly, that it

would provide a mechanism that allowed both the submission and moderation of reader feedback.

First‐hand research was conducted into the process of establishing a website, built for the purpose of a

personal blog. Research was also conducted using information available online in the form of reports,

forums and similar websites for comparison. Options for hosting, marketing and funding were also

examined. Different methods used for the delivery of a website were investigated and it was

determined that a Content Management System would be best suited for this project. Three Content

Management Systems were trialled: WordPress, Tumblr and Microsoft Office Sway. A mock blog

website was created for each of these platforms, a total of three websites. Each website was then

tested against the main requirements for the client’s blog website.

This document, together with these three mock websites (links provided further in this document), form

the body of this report.

Web design methods

For the intents and purposes of this report, two methods for website creation were examined. The first

method, Hypertext Mark‐up Language (HTML), is used to write the code for the website while

incorporating the use of Custom Style Sheets (CSS) for formatting. Traditionally, this is accomplished

using HTML and CSS editing programs such as Adobe Dreamweaver and Notepad++. The second

method involves the use of Content Management Systems (CMS), applications which are used to

manage the content of a website while performing most of the HTML and CSS coding in the background.

Popular CMS applications include WordPress, Tumblr, Drupal and HubSpot. (Crowd, n.d.) In 2015,

Microsoft introduced a new product to their Office line‐up called Sway – this interactive approach to a

CMS was included in the research for this project.

Hypertext Mark‐up Language (HTML)

HTML was developed by Tim Berners‐Lee while he was doing contract work in the 1980s for CERN, the

European Laboratory for Particle Physics in Geneva, Switzerland. (Addison Wesley Longman, 1998) At

the time, CERN was using an in‐house mark‐up language known as SGMLguid, an SGML (Standard

Generalized Mark‐up Language) based documentation format, for communicating documents. A mark‐


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up language differs from a programming language in that it not only describes a structure semantically,

but also adds cues for presentation.

The challenge that Tim faced at the time was how to share text based documents to the many different

types of machines connected to the internet including PC, Macintosh, UNIX and simple terminals.

Commercially available hypertext packages of the time tended to be computer‐specific, making it

difficult to retrieve text from different systems. His solution to this was to develop an HTML browser

software package, coupled with a protocol for the retrieval of documents using hypertext links, which

became known as the HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP). Notably, Tim demonstrated this system on a

NeXT workstation (manufactured by the American computer company founded by Steve Jobs after his

departure from Apple), which, as an object‐oriented operating system, provided many of the tools

needed for Tim’s first prototype. (Addison Wesley Longman, 1998)

Content Management Systems

A tool that has gained momentum over the past decade is the Content Management System (CMS). In

web design, Web Content Management Systems (WCMS) allow websites to be managed through a

graphical user interface, often without the need for much technical experience. This is achieved by

combining a Content Management Application (CMA) and a Content Delivery Application (CDA). The

CMA enables a user who may not be familiar with HTML to create, manage and modify content of a

website. The CDA then compiles this information and uploads it to the website. (TechTarget, n.d.)

This user‐friendly approach to web design has opened the door for many more consumers to invest in

website systems, many of whom otherwise would not have learnt HTML in order to have their own

online presence.

Though my client does have extensive knowledge in Information Technology, his familiarity with website

scripting including HTML is limited. It is for this reason it was determined that a CMS would be best

suited to his requirements, and several options were compared and evaluated.

CMS options

This project sets out to compare some common CMS systems in their ability to achieve the

requirements by the client. Three main requirements were identified for the CMS to meet:

The CMS must make it easy to post new blog articles quickly

There must be a facility in which users of the website are able to comment on blog posts

A mechanism must be provided that the client may use to moderate comments made on blog

posts prior to them being published.


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The three CMS platforms investigated for this project were WordPress, Tumblr and Microsoft Office

Sway. Having identified the main requirements, each CMS was then analysed using an adapted waterfall

methodology. Each platform was used to create and test a website – corrections were made if any

problems were found after which it would be tested again and deployed, before moving onto analysis of

the next platform, as shown below.

Analysis of each of these platforms is detailed in the following segments.

WordPress

WordPress blog

WordPress was founded in 2003 by Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little as a free and open‐source content

management system. It is based on PHP and MySQL. (WordPress, n.d.) It currently has two iterations,

WordPress.org and WordPress.com respectively.

The free WordPress CMS software can be downloaded from WordPress.org to run on your own web

server. This option offers more features and flexibility, but requires the user to pay for their own

hosting, and manage their own web server. (ithemes.com, n.d.) A simpler solution for the new user is

WordPress.com, which runs the same CMS software, but hosting is taken care of by WordPress. By

default, blogs created with WordPress.com will contain “wordpress.com” in the URL, though domain

name options are available as a Premium Upgrade. There a still plenty of options available for

customising a WordPress.com blog site, however it is not possible to edit the PHP code behind the site.

(ithemes.com, n.d.) For the purpose of this project, the WordPress.com architecture has been selected

for evaluation.

I began by creating an account on the website. The setup process was relatively straight‐forward,

offering the capability to optimise itself as a blog website from the very first step (Figure 01). This

altered how the website would be setup slightly, making way for the main content to come in the form

of new posts, with a commenting and moderation platform featuring more prominently for the admin

user. A category for the new site was set from a pre‐defined list, and a theme was selected (which could

be, and was, altered later).

Plan& Analyse Design Build Test Correction Test Deploy


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Several of the themes offered also offered a responsive design, enabling the website to be displayed

differently depending on the device that was used to access it. This makes it possible for mobile and

tablet users to benefit from a clean and optimised design, despite the smaller dimensions (Figure 11).

I then investigated how well the WordPress.com blog was at meeting the requirements of this project.

The admin portal offered a clean interface for creating new posts to publish. With all of the editing

options available, it was evident that this was intended as the primary method of publishing a new post

(Figure 05, 08).

Through further investigation however, I found that WordPress also offered some other unique

methods to publish new posts. Chief amongst these, was the ability to link Microsoft Word to the

WordPress account, after which it was possible to create and publish new posts directly from Microsoft

Word, without needing to visit the admin portal at all (Figure 06, 07). I experimented with this and was

able to publish a full‐featured post including images, which detailed the process of posting from

Microsoft Word.

Another major feature of WordPress is the mobile app that it offers (Figure 12). Not only can new

posts be created and published on the fly, but it offers a strong set of management tools including the

ability to moderate comments right from within the app, no matter where you are. I found this to be a

very strong feature in meeting with two of the three main requirements for this project – making it easy

to post new content, and moderate comments placed on those posts (with the third requirement

maintaining that people are able to comment in the first place).

Each new post that is published to the site is given its own unique URL, based on the date it was

published and the title of the post. For example, the first post that I published on the site has the URL

https://drac84.wordpress.com/2015/06/06/my‐first‐blog‐post/. Although the portion of the URL that

shows the title of the blog post (“my‐first‐blog‐post” in this example, referred to in the admin portal as

the “slug”) is automatically generated, it is possible to edit this if desired. All new posts are featured on

the homepage of the blog, and clicking on the title or comments link of any post will redirect the visitor

to the URL of the post itself, where all the comments that have been left on the post are also displayed.

Tumblr

Tumblr blog

As a major force in the blogging world today, I felt that I could not ignore Tumblr as a platform for

evaluation. Founded in 2006 and deriving its name from the term “tumblelogs” (now referred to as

“microblogs”), the platform focusses on allowing users to exchange small elements of content such as

short sentences, individual images, or video links. (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2012) As of November 5, 2015,

the service hosts over 261 million blogs consisting of over 123 billion individual posts. (Tumblr, 2015)


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The Tumblr blog entailed a similar setup process to WordPress, which included setting up a theme that

would dictate the look and feel, colour palette and font settings of the site. Most if not all of these

settings could be further changed however. The theme itself includes many options that you can tweak

including title colours, accent colours, background and header images (Figure 15); and the entire theme

can also be edited with a built‐in html editor (Figure 16).

Creating new posts to the blog was also a very simple process. Upon logging into the service the user is

directed to a dashboard, an area that shows information about your own blogs as well as highlights on

other blogs the user may follow. A simple widget exists here to quickly create a new blog entry (Figure

17). Users are also able to publish new posts by e‐mail (Figure 18), and are even able setup a service

which allows them to publish audio posts by calling a phone number (USA). A more detailed interface

with more editing tools is available through the portal page for the website (Figure 19).

While Tumblr blogs do offer a facility for users to place comments on blogs, these are often anonymous

and offer the creator no form of moderation. As this was one of the major considerations for this

project, I investigated other options for a comment platform that could be used in conjunction with the

Tumblr blog. A suitable platform called Disqus (detailed more in the next section) offered integration

with Tumblr. The Disqus comment platform is built in to some themes, but not all. Fortunately, the

theme that I selected for its cross‐platform compatibility (which enables the blog to be displayed in

mobile‐friendly views on tablets and smartphones (Figure 20)) also supports the Disqus comment

platform.

Again striking a similarity with WordPress, Tumblr also allows users to manage their blog from a mobile

app. It is quick and easy to publish new posts directly from within the app, making it a great tool for on

the go. As Tumblr does not offer any comment moderation tools however, these tools were notably

absent from the app in comparison to WordPress (Figure 21).

Microsoft Office Sway

Sway blog

At the beginning of this project, I received an e‐mail from Microsoft advertising a new product they had

launched known as “Sway”. As part of the Microsoft Office line of products, it touted itself as a platform

that could be used to create anything from a travel journal or food blog, to an online scrapbook. “In

many ways, it's also like a modern Content Management Service like those offered by Squarespace and

Medium, allowing you to just plug in content and get a beautiful final product.” (Hardawar, 2015)

As a ‘blog’ of any sort, I decided to include this platform for evaluation. Having created an account, I

found that it was quite easy to add new content to the blog or “sway”. It works by creating cards that

contain text or other media, which are then dynamically animated in a presentation (Figure 23).

Graphics, audio and video can be dragged and dropped from places like Facebook, YouTube, or your


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device. Animation and style can be ‘remixed’ which randomizes the animation style and format.

Overall, the platform was able to deliver content using striking and professional looking presentations,

which required little effort to publish (Figure 24).

However, that is about as far as Sway could come to meeting the requirements of this project, and my

evaluation of the platform came to an abrupt end. While it did offer some flashy display options, I found

that while he entire “sway” could be shared with others by sending a link to the page, it did not offer a

commenting platform of any kind. The back‐end code is also not editable, meaning it was not possible

to add another comment platform to link into it either. This was of major concern, as two of the three

main requirements for a CMS platform in this project revolve around the comment platform.

As Microsoft Office Sway was unable to satisfy these main requirements of the project, further

evaluation was deemed unnecessary.

Comment Platforms and Moderation

Apart from creating a blog website to begin with, my client expressed that he would like visitors to have

the ability to place comments on new posts that he may publish. This was identified as the second main

requirement for a platform to deliver. He did not, however, wish to maintain a database of users

specific to his site. A good way to deal with this was to find and implement a system that would allow

visitors to use pre‐existing accounts as a means of authentication to place comments. The most suitable

would be a system that uses social network accounts for visitors to log in with.

It was also important to consider the moderation options available while evaluating the different

comment platforms. Due to the nature of my client’s website, it was important to make this a key

consideration, giving him the tools necessary to filter and block potentially undesirable feedback before

it is published on the website. This was identified as the third main requirement for a platform to

deliver.

I began my evaluation with WordPress. The platform itself offers a built‐in commenting system that

allows the site owner to approve, delete or edit comments (Figure 09). Viewers of the blog have the

option to comment by filling in their details (name, email address) or by logging in with a supported

social network account ‐ WordPress, Facebook, Twitter, or Google. (WordPress, n.d.) New comments

placed are hidden on the site until the site owner approves the comment. An email is sent to the site

owner informing them when they have new comments to review.

One odd thing of note with the WordPress comment platform however, was how it appeared that the

moderator was granted the ability to edit any comment placed on his posts – by anyone – through the

moderation panel (Figure 10). This would seem to present a security risk to users of the site and I

thought it interesting that the function to edit comments themselves actually existed.


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I next began investigating the comment platform options for Tumblr. I found that although the platform

itself does offer a form of commenting, it did not seem to have any moderating tools. Through some

research on this, I found that one platform in particular was repeatedly used on other sites

(MediaWorks, n.d.), and recommended in guides (James, n.d.) ‐ Disqus.

Similar to WordPress’ solution, Disqus enables users to log in with a variety of social media accounts

including Facebook, Twitter and Google (Figure 27). It does this in quite a clever way though, that

maintains a degree of separation from the user’s actual social media account. It achieves this by linking

its own app to the user’s social media account, e.g. Facebook, which is then granted certain permissions

allowing it to use profile information to set up an account on the Disqus database. In this way,

commenters are able to quickly sign up and comment, but these comments are not visible anywhere on

Facebook itself since that isn’t technically the platform used to place the comment, only to create the

Disqus account. This is precisely what my client is looking for ‐ a clear separation from social media sites

like Facebook, while still taking advantage of its huge member base to attract readers to easily comment

on blogs. The Disqus platform can be added to almost any other type of website, including a WordPress

blog.

The Disqus platform offers a comprehensive web portal for the moderation of posts. The Disqus

account holder, in this case my client, creates an account on Disqus and sets up a URL address for the

portal (Figure 25). This account is then what is linked to the users’ website or websites, enabling

multiple sites to have comments posted on them moderated from a single portal (Figure 26). For

example, if my client were to set up both a WordPress and a Tumblr blog, they could both be linked to

the same Disqus account and all comments posted on either blog would pass through the same portal

for moderation.

Several settings are available to the account holder for moderation, including options for how to handle

new comments posted, and user flagging (Figure 29). For the first of these, or “pre‐moderation”, the

account can be set to allow all comments to be posted without approval, or require moderator approval

for new comments. In my client’s case, the later of these would be recommended. For the second,

users of the site are able to flag comments that they may find inappropriate or offensive for moderator

attention. This would usually be more useful when pre‐moderation is disabled, but the two can also be

used in conjunction with one another.

Like WordPress, an email is sent to the site owner informing them when they have new comments to

review. The owner can then log in to the Disqus moderation panel but also has the option to reply to

the email itself, with code words like “Approve”, “Delete” or “Spam” (Figure 28).

Unfortunately, comment platforms and moderation is where the Microsoft Office Sway platform came

apart as a viable CMS platform. As discussed in the previous section, while the platform did offer

methods to share entire “sways”, it was not able to offer any means for visitors of the site to place

comments that attached directly to posts that were published.


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Hosting

In the outset of this project, it was felt that hosting options would be an important consideration. The

three CMS systems evaluated however, all offer their own form of hosting solutions. A free

WordPress.com account includes hosting and free x.wordpress.com domain. 3GB of space are included

with the free plan, and can add a further 10GB as a premium member. Business members get unlimited

storage. (WordPress, n.d.) However, graphics and videos can be hosted elsewhere using other services

such as Flickr or YouTube, and then embedded into blogs – making the additional hosting space quite

unnecessary.

Both the Tumblr and Microsoft Office Sway services are hosted within their own networks.

Marketing

Not dissimilar to hosting, marketing and advertising was considered something worth consideration

when this project began. This was however, before the project shifted focus from creating one finalised

website and investigating how to keep it running, to evaluating the merits of three content management

systems for creating the website.

My client feels that building a huge audience for his blog is not of major concern. The nature of his

personal blog means that he does not mind whether it has 20 or 200 followers – the main purpose is

simply to have the blog. While this was not clear at the beginning of this project, it has since become

more clear

If the blog were to suddenly become very popular, it would be possible to add an advertising aspect to

either a WordPress or a Tumblr blog to generate some funding.

Conclusion and Recommendation

Of the three content management systems trialled, I initially had my doubts about Tumblr as a suitable

content management system. Tumblr however was quite comparable to WordPress, offering just as

much if not more customisation. Surprisingly, Microsoft Office Sway was the least suitable fit for this

project. Having touted itself as a possible blogging platform in a promotional email, it was missing a key

component required for this project – a moderated commenting system. Sways created can be shared

in many ways, but users can’t really comment on the actual documents it creates, making it more viable

as a presentation platform rather than one for an interactive blog.


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When attached to a Tumblr blog, the Disqus comment platform also offered many merits. The interface

for moderating comments is clean and easy to follow, and additionally allows the same account to be

used to track comments on multiple blogs.

In conclusion though, WordPress would be the recommendation of this report. It really is an all‐in‐one

solution, with plenty to offer with the free WordPress.com account alone – which can always be

upgraded and transferred to a self‐hosted WordPress.org account at some future time. It has several

options available that make creating new posts easy, allows users of the site to easily create comments

on blogs using their own pre‐existing social media accounts, and allows the owner of the site to

moderate these comments. In doing so, it achieves all three of the main requirements set out by the

client – and it can do all of this, even by using the mobile app.


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Significant Issues

1. Hardware Failure

Shortly into beginning my research, I encountered issues with hardware which was to be used

for my research. This caused significant downtime (7 days) as the hardware had to be sent away

for repairs. This type of failure was identified as a potential risk in my project proposal. During

this time, I had temporary hardware set up in order to continue with some research tasks. I

made a point to do this as I live out of town and most of my project work was carried out from

home using my own equipment.

The hardware issues with original equipment were rectified and I was able to complete this

project once the original hardware was restored.

2. Project Re‐focus

After completing my project proposal and starting on the research component of this project, I

quickly discovered that the time restraints I had placed on myself with the schedule did not

allow enough time to complete the desired evaluations to a satisfactory degree.

The initial focus for this project was to select a single method of delivering a blog website,

however I found that more attention was required to properly evaluate different CMS platforms

‐ a research task I had only allotted eight days to complete.

The original tasks and scheduling were as follows:


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Through discussions with my Project Supervisor and Sponsor, we were able to reconcile this

issue by changing the focus of the project from delivering a complete and finalised website, to

the actual evaluation of different CMS platforms (and by extension, the Disqus comment and

moderation platform). This meant that rather than implementing a single complete and

finalised website by the end of this project, a website was created using each of the three

platforms for the express purpose of evaluating their ability to meet with the requirements set

by the client. My client could then use the information presented by this project to make a

selection on which platform to use going forward, to publish a more complete website specific

to their needs.

This altered the original tasks and scheduling quite a great deal, as shown in the updated chart

below:


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References

Addison Wesley Longman. (1998). Chapter 2. Retrieved from w3.org:

http://www.w3.org/People/Raggett/book4/ch02.html

Crowd, G. (n.d.). What is Web Content Management Software? Retrieved October 10, 2015, from G2 Crowd:

https://www.g2crowd.com/categories/web‐content‐management

Hardawar, D. (2015, August 5). Microsoft's Sway presentation app hits Windows 10, leaves preview. Retrieved from

Engadget: http://www.engadget.com/2015/08/05/sway‐windows‐10/

ithemes.com. (n.d.). WordPress.com vs WordPress.org | WordPress 101 Tutorials :: iThemes. Retrieved November

2, 2015, from ithemes: https://ithemes.com/tutorials/wordpress‐com‐vs‐wordpress‐org/

James, N. (n.d.). How To Install Commenting Into Your Blog. Retrieved October 8, 2015, from nickreborn:

http://nickreborn.tumblr.com/Tutorial

Kaplan, A. M., & Haenlein, M. (2012, September 11). Kaplan, Andreas ‐ The early bird catches the ... news.pdf.

Retrieved from http://michaelhaenlein.net:

http://michaelhaenlein.net/Publications/Kaplan,%20Andreas%20‐%20The%20early%20bird%20catches%

20the%20...%20news.pdf

MediaWorks. (n.d.). Soulfest. Retrieved October 8, 2015, from Mai FM:

http://www.maifm.co.nz/Events/SoulFest/Home.aspx

TechTarget. (n.d.). content management system (CMS) definition. Retrieved November 2, 2015, from TechTarget:

http://searchsoa.techtarget.com/definition/content‐management‐system

Tumblr. (2015, November 5). About | Tumblr. Retrieved from Tumblr: https://www.tumblr.com/about

WordPress. (n.d.). Adding Storage Space. Retrieved October 5, 2015, from WordPress:

https://en.support.wordpress.com/space‐upgrade/

WordPress. (n.d.). Who Can Comment. Retrieved October 5, 2015, from WordPress:

https://en.support.wordpress.com/who‐can‐comment/

WordPress. (n.d.). WordPress Web Hosting. Retrieved November 2, 2015, from WordPress.org:

https://wordpress.org/hosting/


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Screenshots

Figure 01. (WordPress) The setup screen for WordPress. New users are presented with the option to create either a new website or blog – selecting a

blog on this screen will optimize the website for this purpose.


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Figure 02. (WordPress) After an initial setup process, you are directed to the settings page of the admin portal where you can enter more details about

your site. Other areas of the admin portal allow you to change the theme of the site, view statistical data and even create new posts.


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Figure 03. (WordPress) The user interface for selecting a theme for the website. The theme dictates the look and feel of the site, page layout, and

colour palette. These elements can often be edited however. Different themes also offer different feature sets such as customisable menus, widget

areas, and some offer responsive designs which change the layout of pages depending on the device that the site is being accessed from. I have selected

such a theme for the WordPress blog in this project.


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Figure 04. (WordPress) A preview of the “Plane” theme that I selected for the WordPress blog, in the early design stage before any content or

modifications were added.


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Figure 05. (WordPress) WordPress offers a simple user interface for creating new posts.


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Figure 06. (WordPress) While investigating how easy it is to create new blog posts (one of the two major requirements of this project), I found that it is

possible to create new posts directly from Microsoft Word.


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Figure 07. (WordPress) Having successfully linked my WordPress blog to Microsoft Word, I was then easily able to create blog posts from Word. This

was as simple as selecting “Blog post” as the new document type (where you may ordinarily select “Blank page” upon launching Word), where you can

then easily create a new post to publish using familiar Office tools. A post from Word appears on the blog site I’ve created demonstrating this.


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Figure 08. (WordPress) The notification that appears on the site admin page when a user has posted a comment on a blog post. Clicking on the

comment takes the site owner to the moderator page to approve or delete the comment.


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Figure 09. (WordPress) The comment moderator page.


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Figure 10. (WordPress) The site owner is able to edit comments left on blog posts, even those that have been left by others.


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Figure 11. (WordPress) An example of how themes with a responsive design are able to display beautifully on different devices.

This is the WordPress blog displayed on an Android mobile device.


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Figure 12. (WordPress) The WordPress app available on mobile app stores makes it possible to create new posts, pages, manage entire blogs, as well as

moderate comments left on blog posts by visitors.


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Figure 13. (Tumblr) Once a Tumblr blog site has been setup, there are many theme options that can be selected. As with WordPress, there are a variety

of premium themes as well as many free ones.


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Figure 14. (Tumblr) As with WordPress, different themes offer different function sets. The “Blogit” Tumblr theme selected for this project includes

Disqus comment support and device responsive design (see also Figure 20).


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Figure 15. (Tumblr) Once a theme has been selected, the site owner has many options within the theme that can be edited.


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Figure 16. (Tumblr) While all themes have elements that can be edited easily, most can also be edited using a built‐in HTML editor.


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Figure 17. (Tumblr) A widget exists on a users’ dashboard page, which makes creating a new blog post very simple and straight‐forward. Editing tools

are dynamically displayed when the user selects text or other elements in the edit box. The ‘+’ button gives the user more options, such as insert an

image, video or GIF.

Figure 18. (Tumblr) Posts can also be published directly to the Tumblr blog via email. The blog can even be setup to post audio blogs by phone.


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Figure 19. (Tumblr) More comprehensive options for creating new blog posts are available to the site owner through the portal page for the site.


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Figure 20. (Tumblr) All Tumblr blogs also offer a responsive design, making blogs dynamically optimise themselves depending on the device used to

access them. This is how the Tumblr blog created for this project appears on an Android mobile device.


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Figure 21. (Tumblr) As with WordPress, Tumblr also offers users a mobile app that is capable of managing blog content.


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Figure 22. (Sway) Some basic settings editable in a sway. Elements such as colour and fonts can be pre‐selected, and new animation options will be

generated based on the design elements chosen.


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Figure 23. (Sway) Content such as titles, text, graphics, video and audio are all added to the sway on their own ‘cards’. The cards are then animated

creating a unique presentation using the media provided.


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Figure 24. (Sway) The first slide of a sway presentation. The animation styles can be ‘remixed’ to provide a completely different look and feel for a

presentation, using the same content. In this example, the title of the sway has its own first page, with the navigational buttons in the bottom‐right

hand corner used to navigate to other parts of the presentation, using media generated from other ‘cards’.


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Figure 25. (Disqus) The setup process for the Disqus comment moderation platform involves adding the link to your website and creating a

abc.disqus.com URL which will be used to access the administration portal.


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Figure 26. (Disqus) Having selected a Tumblr theme that provides support for Disqus, I was able to link my newly created Disqus account to the site by

specifying the Disqus short name in the site settings. This attaches a comment facility to each new blog post and new comments that are created are

directed to the linked Disqus account for admin moderation.


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Figure 27. (Disqus) An example of comments being placed on a Tumblr blog post using the Disqus comment platform. This also shows the options that

are available for logging in to place comments – a Disqus account, Facebook, Twitter or Google.


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Figure 28. (Disqus) once comments have been made on blog posts using the Disqus comment platform, comments are directed to the admin portal for

the administrator to moderate. Just as with the built‐in WordPress model, it is here that comments can be accepted, rejected, marked as spam or

deleted.


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Figure 29. (Disqus) The way that new comments are handled was an important consideration for my client. It was decided (on all comment platforms)

that it would be best to have all comments submitted for moderation before they are published on the site. This gives complete control to the site

administrator, effectively eliminating potentially undesirable comments before they are even published to the blog post.

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