Footnotes, Formatting, and Coding

After a few days of going over feedback from the rough draft of the site, I have finally begun making some edits. I haven’t gotten as far as I would have liked, but I am pleased to say things are definitely moving along. Today I made some adjustments to the Home page, adding some additional instruction on the structure of the website and what visitors may expect to find. Based on feedback regarding our menu, I added a description of the different sections and their subpages. I linked every page so that a visitor may click on Locals, for instance, and be taken to that page, or they can click on Economy and Culture to go to that page. I am hoping that this description will be sufficient in explaining the website so as to avoid any confusion concerning the structure. I have also begun linking all abbreviations so that clicking on them will redirect a visitor to the Glossary and Bibliography page. So far I have only completed this task on the Home page, but since we have decided this is the direction we want to go in, it should be easier from here on out to link all other abbreviations on the site.

I have added the “UP NEXT:” area at the bottom of the Home, Locals, Land, and Economy and Culture. I also added an image on the Land page that I feel illustrates “land leases” and “scenic easements” nicely. Perhaps one of my biggest successes concerns footnotes. While building my last website, I experienced absolutely no trouble linking footnotes, but I was told that not every theme is as footnote-compatible as the one we used, so it wasn’t unexpected when I faced difficulties with the BRP site. After much help from Amanda, one of UNCA’s magnificent librarians, we obtained a code that would allow us to link the superscript number to the footnotes section at the bottom of the page. Amanda took care of the one footnote on the Home page and left me with the code, but it proved more challenging than I expected. After a lot of confusion and links that led nowhere, I finally got the code to work properly on the entire Locals section! I still haven’t figured out how to force the link to take the viewer directly to the coinciding note below, but it does in fact redirect the reader to the footnotes portion of the page. I’m not sure I can articulate the relief that I felt at that moment.

Although the site is coming along nicely, I still feel a small amount of anxiety regarding our primary sources (or mine, rather). There has been—and still is—so much to sift through. From maps to superintendent reports to newsletters to oral histories, the amount of information that we have to process is overwhelming. However, anxieties aside, I have every confidence that the website will turn out fantastic. At the very least I have managed to gain the attention of a certain Dr. Anne Whisnant on Twitter! Perhaps this is due to the hashtags that I use fairly regularly or because someone from the UNCA History Department professor mentioned our work to her, but either way we now have outside professionals paying attention to our project which is perhaps the most exciting and terrifying thing that an undergraduate student can experience.

One thought on “Footnotes, Formatting, and Coding

  1. Your close narration of the development of the project site is very much appreciated Kristen. So too is the attention to detail that you are putting into the smallish but very important things such as attribution.

    Bravo!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *