I started out clueless, thinking I was going to be using commands in a terminal to create a website for the BROWN & WHITE. No, everything I learned during the first week of my project was purposefully to enhance my understanding of what goes on behind the inputting of information as I create the web pages.

The BROWN & WHITE is set up on a virtual server, separate from the world wide web, which means you will not find it online until the final decision and all the security tools allow me and my team to do so. In the mean time, the virtual server allows program to be accessed offline and one of the programs that I am running on for this project is Joomla!

Joomla is perfect for newspaper publications. As an administrator, my privileges match my responsibilities. I am allowed to assign users and give them permissions. I am allowed to create groups, set passwords and send invitations to people to become Authors, Editor and Publishers of the Brown and White. When the mission of this project is accomplished, members of the BROWN AND WHITE club will be invited through an email. If a member is assigned the permission of an Author, he or she will be able to submit stories to a category called Articles. A member with the assignment of an Editor will be able to see submitted stories highlighted in blue, any time he or she logs in. Saving an edited article is obviously the last step an Editor will have to take care of. When a Publisher logs in, even an article that has been edited previously be an Editor can still be modified. Here is where the Publisher has the most privileges over all users: the Publisher chooses a more specific category that is appropriate for the article and then changes the preference from unpublished to publish. This is not a must-do because then it would just be an ordinary/uncategorized article. The publisher can also mark the article to become a featured article on the webpage.

It took me a while to come up with a design for the webpage; first, I realized I do not have banners, logos and a brief of what the website should look like. Carl however advised that it would be much easier to go through the example pages on Joomla! I started out like an eleven year old on a playground packed with blocks and boxes. On the administrative page, I pranced through directions on the management of Articles, Categories, Extensions, Modules and everything else that will be helpful to know about before messing things up. I believe Templates were apart of the package too, but I have not even tested that yet. Oh?

The webpage is looking slick and sly. I have one more day to dust it up a bit and pimp my ride out of ‘Town. Frankly, I am tired of looking at the screen, my stress gets worse around two o’clock and that is my time to hit the gym. Time out for me today, I came in at 8:00ish and I gotta roll ‘cause it is 5:00 p.m. That’s dedication, but this job and me, not congenial for personal reasons, “I gotta stay fly.” You know, Three Six Mafia …

Peace,

Emmanuel