Preface

For my repurposing website I chose a nonfiction essay about the memories that I don’t remember from my childhood. When I chose this essay, I thought it was a good decision because it was already broken down into sections of memories, which I could break down into individual pages. This technique worked well.

Problems

When I pasted my content in, I didn’t revise the text first. I ran into a problem—as I read what was on each page, I realized that my content already felt like it was written for the web. The memories were succinct because they were short memories, so it wasn’t necessary to edit most of them. I felt like I had cheated on the assignment.

When we got into small groups for feedback, I still hadn’t revised any of my content. I waited for someone to comment on this, but no one did. My group had minor editing suggestions like set this line by itself to draw more attention to the content, and add level one or two headings at the top of each page to tell the reader where they are. Until then I had only headings in the breadcrumbs bar, which wasn’t enough, apparently.

With those suggestions, this is what I changed:

• I broke up long blocks of content into short 3 to 4 line paragraphs
• Inserted level two headings on every page for clarification for my readers
• Changed the order of the memories from the print version to the web version to clarify order of provenance
• Made each page stand on its own, so the reader would hopefully understand what the content was about
• Edited content that was redundant from one page to another. Example: phrases in which I used “I don’t remember.” (However, I did reinforce the idea that this was content that I didn’t remember, but that I’d heard in story form from my parents. I did this to ease any confusion the reader may have about why I created this site, though this reminder isn’t on every page.)

Other content was changed by cutting some and adding more. In my Chucky page, I didn’t have more than five lines of content. The memory was only about his laugh, so I couldn’t add content about other cute things he did. I took what I had and broke it up into smaller paragraphs and added some a few other details—nothing much. For my longer pages, I found that I needed to cut quite a bit of content. For example, on Answered Prayer, Jellyfish, and Wyoming Nights the content was lengthy. Under Wyoming I had two memories, but the second memory wasn’t pertinent, so I cut it. I took the memory that I did have and broke the dialogue down into its normal structure, which made it flow smoothly. The Jellyfish story was a vivid memory, but the content was compact and not written for the web. I took specific lines and made them their own paragraph to break the monotony of the longer paragraphs in hopes it would solve the problem—I used that same technique on Answered Prayer.  

Site Design

When designing my site, I didn’t read Price’s suggestions because I already knew what I wanted. I wanted a site that was very simple, with a child-like theme. I created a site with a simple banner, easy navigation, and visuals that didn’t distract too much from the content. I used his basic techniques of titling the page in the breadcrumbs, at the top of the page and at the top of the content. However, I didn’t use descriptive titles because they would have taken away from the content. I wanted the reader to read because of the unique titles – “what is this Jellyfish page about?” Also, bullets didn’t belong in any of my content because they would have been to impersonal.  I highlighted/called out text once on the Home page, but beyond that I used none of the aesthetic techniques that Price raves about so much. Another technique that I didn’t use was interlinking between my pages. I felt that if I were to link to my Chicken Legs page from my Old Green page or any other pages, it would have been too jumpy. I wanted my readers to get to each page by clicking on the links at the bottom. I didn’t want to control them within my text, but rather within the site design- links at the bottom. I did this to keep with the child-like theme of keeping the design simple.

Content Value

How did this content become more valuable when adapted to a site? The material—the memories became more meaningful to me because I was able to understand them better when they were taken out of the context of the original work. It became more valuable to my web readers because I’ve shortened text where needed to make it an easier read, more scannable, less time consuming. However, I didn’t do as Price recommends and cut my text by 50%. The memories were short enough that if I had cut any part out, it wouldn’t have made sense to the reader.

Despite this, I prefer this content as an essay on paper. The original flowed very nicely, but now that it’s broken into pages, the reader must click on the next page—it’s not guaranteed that they’ll read them in order, so the original flow is lost. On the web, the reader might say “so what?” but my hardcopy readers have a better opportunity to read it as a whole that feels complete. I’m not saying the site content isn’t complete because I feel it is, but the multiple pages—I feel—take away from the content’s wholeness.   

Copyright © 2005
Last modified: February 25, 2005 | April Anderson