Week 1

As a requirement of Advanced Editing for Digital Media, I will be working with several other fellow students to construct a website and send it live at the end of this semester. In first week’s class, we looked at three websites constructed by students from previous years—UpUrAlley: Lygon Street, Chocrocks, and Melbin Noir.

I personally am mostly impressed by UpUrAlley, which I think is more commercialised than the other two.

UpUrAlley is targeting specifically at people who are interested in life on Lygon Street, Melbourne. Basically, the site functions like a local newspaper publishing information including local news, job vacancies, and entertainment guide.

I really like their idea of encouraging local businesses to buy advertorial spaces. The local businesses would know their ads could reach exactly their potential local customers and hence their ads will be more cost-effective.

Their using of TweetGrid is another thing I would like to praise, because such function allows browsers to interact and contribute to UpUrAlley in real time.

Chocrocks obviously has more beautiful page design and more informative contents. I really like the navigation bar on the right side. Although I think it could be shorter so that users do not have to scroll down to see the whole page. Making a simple drop-down menu should do the trick.